Former Federal Prosecutor Joel Sweet Returns to Berger Montague

PHILADELPHIA – Berger Montague, a national plaintiffs’ law firm, is pleased to announce that Joel M. Sweet has returned to the Firm after serving as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania for more than two decades. Mr. Sweet will be focusing on the firm’s highly successful False Claims Act, Qui Tam, & Whistleblower, Consumer Protection, and Securities Fraud practices.

“Joel’s return strengthens multiple practice areas, including our consumer protection group and our False Claims Act, Qui Tam, & Whistleblower team,” said Berger Montague Chairman Eric Cramer. “We have had tremendous success across these areas recently, including phenomenal whistleblower victories such as our $1.6 billion jury trial win against Janssen, and our $100 million PharMerica settlement. Joel brings even more fire power, depth, and insight to our nationally recognized False Claims Act team led by Sherrie Savett and to multiple other practice areas. We look forward to continuing to succeed on behalf of shareholders and consumers, as well as in protecting the integrity of governmental programs, and recovering even more for taxpayers and our whistleblower clients in the future.”

“I could not be more excited to return to Berger Montague, where I was hard-wired as a young lawyer to be creative, tenacious, ethical, and always to pursue justice. The opportunity to return to work with brilliant colleagues to protect the rights of taxpayers, consumers, investors, and borrowers essentially is a continuation of my career in public service.”  

As an Assistant U.S. Attorney for 21 years, Mr. Sweet represented the United States in dozens of successful False Claims Act cases concerning misconduct by health care companies, defense contractors, and other federal contractors and grantees. Mr. Sweet also prosecuted, civilly and criminally, banks and payment processors complicit in consumer fraud, as well as illegal online payday lenders. Mr. Sweet’s efforts have led to the recovery of hundreds of millions of dollars for American taxpayers and defrauded consumers.

Mr. Sweet’s success and innovative strategies fighting consumer fraud led to the U.S. Attorney General to appoint Mr. Sweet to design and lead an aggressive national consumer protection initiative. Working from the Department of Justice’s Consumer Protection Branch, Mr. Sweet led a team of prosecutors and law enforcement agents in an effort the New York Times described as an “important strategy designed to protect depositors from unauthorized withdrawals from their banks accounts.”

Mr. Sweet also represented the United States in hundreds of cases brought against the United States in federal court. These include wrongful death, medical malpractice, constitutional tort, employment discrimination, immigration, and other types of cases. In one particularly unique matter, Mr. Sweet successfully represented the United States in a case concerning the ownership of ten 1933 Double Eagles—the last gold coins minted by the United States—that the government proved were stolen from the Mint in Philadelphia in 1933.

Mr. Sweet began his career at Berger Montague in 1993 after graduating from Temple Law School. At the firm, he worked on In re: Holocaust Victim Assets Litigation, which resulted in a $1.25 billion settlement with Switzerland’s three largest banks alleged to have illegally retained Holocaust victims’ assets deposited at the banks, and laundered Jewish communal assets plundered by Nazis and their allies. After five years at a large Philadelphia defense firm, Mr. Sweet joined the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Mr. Sweet also served as an adjunct professor of law, teaching Health Care Fraud and Abuse at Villanova University’s Charles Widger School of Law and at Drexel University’s Kline School of Law, and as an adjunct clinical professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Carey School of Law.

Please read more about Mr. Sweet and his experience here.

Berger Montague is one of the nation’s preeminent law firms focusing on complex civil litigation, class actions, and mass torts in federal and state courts throughout the United States. The firm is active in the fields of antitrust, commercial litigation, consumer protection, defective products, environmental law, employment law, securities, and whistleblower cases, among many other practice areas. For more than 50 years, Berger Montague has played lead roles in precedent-setting cases and has recovered over $50 billion for its clients and the classes they have represented. Berger Montague is headquartered in Philadelphia and has offices in Chicago, Minneapolis, San Diego, San Francisco, Toronto, Washington, D.C., and Wilmington, DE.