Geoff Garinther is the chair of Venable’s Litigation Division and a member of the firm’s Management Committee. A former federal prosecutor with more than 27 years of trial experience, his practice focuses on independent investigations for the boards of public companies and defending corporations and individuals accused of white collar crimes, particularly where there are allegations of healthcare fraud or antitrust violations.

Mr. Garinther regularly conducts internal investigations for corporate directors, including Zapata investigations for independent directors dealing with shareholder litigation. On criminal defense matters – which recently have included defending pharmaceutical companies in health care fraud investigations, executives in antitrust investigations, and directors in an FCPA matter – his focus is on avoiding prosecution of his clients altogether.

Mr. Garinther is also very experienced should trial become necessary, having taken nearly 50 to verdict.  Those trials include a series of FDA corruption prosecutions in the 1990s, including the conviction of the then head of the FDA’s generic drug division.  More recently, he obtained an acquittal after a three-week jury trial for a prominent plaintiffs’ attorney accused by DOJ of bribing IRS agents.  His peers in the lawyer-rating entity Benchmark Litigation, where he is listed among the highest-ranking white collar defense attorneys in both DC and Maryland, describe him as "a very polished trial lawyer."

Significant Matters

As reported in the "Big Suits" section of the March 2012 American Lawyer, Mr. Garinther and his partner Warren Hamel led a Venable team in a four-year investigation and negotiation of criminal and civil claims against an India-based generic drug manufacturer, Ranbaxy, that resulted in a settlement allowing the company to exercise its first-to-file right to market Atorvastatin (generic Lipitor) in the United States.

Since 2009, Mr. Garinther has been pursuing shareholder litigation against three former officers of Tampa-based WellCare Health Plans, Inc., following a Zapata investigation into the claims on behalf of an independent director of WellCare.

Over the past three years, Mr. Garinther has successfully defended executives – two based in Asia and one in the U.S. – in three different DOJ Antitrust Division investigations.

Mr. Garinther recently successfully defended a prominent DC law firm against an effort to obtain discovery from four of its lawyers who had conducted an internal investigation for a multi-national pharmaceutical company.

Activities

Mr. Garinther is a member of the Criminal Justice Act panel for the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, through which he represents indigent criminal defendants. He also chairs the joint state and federal bar associations' liaison committee to that court. He occasionally appears as a television analyst on criminal matters, has written extensively on corporate governance and homeland security issues, and has lectured, as a defense lawyer, at the DOJ’s National Advocacy Center.