Randall S. (Randy) Luskey

SAN FRANCISCO - For a few years as an assistant U.S. attorney a decade ago, Randy Luskey prosecuted health care fraud matters. Now, he is considered among the top defense attorneys in the field.
Since joining Paul Weiss early last year, he and his colleagues have represented many health care, hospital and pharmaceutical companies in litigation and government investigations. "We've seen a real uptick in scrutiny in life sciences companies from both regulators and whistle-blowers," he said.
Luskey and his team spent much of 2020 and 2021 defending pharma giant Gilead Sciences against allegations from two whistle-blowers that the company's payment of speaker fees to top doctors amounted to kickbacks for using Gilead medicines. "We set out to demonstrate through discovery affirmatively that Gilead was running completely compliant speaker programs," he said.
The key to wringing out a settlement last year was his success with three motions. For one, the judge decided Gilead could present evidence demonstrating a whistle-blower's spoliation of text message evidence. Another was for summary judgment. The third argued that another whistle-blower had made similar kickback allegations against the company previously, raising a novel "first-to-file" defense.
What made that motion unique was the previous whistle-blower's litigation involved Gilead's hepatitis B medication, while Luskey's case dealt with hepatitis C drugs. "We had to convince the court that even though [the earlier case] related to a different set of drugs, it raised the same legal theories, and the first-to-file doctrine should still apply," he said. The case settled before the judge could rule. Purcell v. Gilead Sciences, Inc., 2:17-cv- 03523 (E.D. PA, filed Aug. 7, 2017)
He also has been busy representing UCLA in investigations and litigation alleging some of its doctors sexually assaulted patients. In one of those lawsuits in February, his argument persuaded a judge to grant UCLA's demurrer after first tentatively ruling against it.
"There was simply no evidence that the institution knew or should have known" about the doctor's wrongdoing, Luskey said. "The court flipped his tentative and the next day dismissed the complaint, which is pretty rare."
He also is representing the UC schools and programs in several investigations by federal agencies into whether faculty and researchers failed to disclose their ties to China when seeking grants. "These are fascinating cases," he said. "We've worked behind the scenes with the schools and the government to assuage any concerns."