Do You Accept Insurance? A Practitioner’s Guide to Coverage Issues in White Collar Cases

Consider a hypothetical in which a defense attorney receives an urgent telephone call from one of her firm’s long-standing clients, a diagnostic imaging center with several locations in the tri-state area that just received a subpoena from the local U.S. Attorney’s Office. The client knows nothing more than what the subpoena states: the government has initiated an investigation into allegations of healthcare fraud. The corporation has two weeks to produce all billing records for all patients at all locations for the past year. Having handled a number of similar matters, the defense attorney knows the drill. She will contact the prosecutor to get more time to respond and hopefully narrow the scope of the government’s far-reaching request. Mindful of costs, she recalls that the law firm just received the balance of a large invoice from this client on another matter, and that was not an easy task. She recalls attending a CLE about a year ago, and one of the topics discussed was insurance coverage for corporations under investigation. She does not want to pick up the phone to call the government until she knows the firm will be paid.