About Us

EXPERIENCED LITIGATORS

Whatley Kallas is well suited to litigate against some of the largest defense firms in the world. Our lawyers have litigated all over the country, in both federal and state courts, and arbitrated in arbitral forums from coast to coast. Our clients can feel confident that when a health insurer or other company faces an individual or class action brought by Whatley Kallas, it knows that Whatley Kallas can and will try the case with vigor. Our firm has one of the few lawyers who has tried a class action to a billion-dollar-plus verdict for plaintiffs and successful verdict for defendants. We were selected by the Steelworkers when they needed someone to try a RICO class action before a jury. Similarly, when America’s cattle ranchers needed to take Tyson to trial in an antitrust case, we were there, all the way to a jury verdict of $1.3 billion. Whatley Kallas lawyers’ track record of trying cases to verdict produces better results for our clients because the defendant knows that it will be in for a fight to the finish.

EXPERIENCED NEGOTIATORS

While our lawyers will litigate a matter to conclusion, we are experienced enough to know when to recommend that settlement or even pre-suit resolution is in their clients’ best interest. We have negotiated some of the most significant settlements in the country. In the process of litigating and negotiating healthcare settlements, our lawyers have learned what individual healthcare providers and groups need in their contracts, and we have successfully negotiated significantly improved contracts for healthcare providers.

A HEALTHCARE FOCUS

The lawyers at Whatley Kallas are committed to using the substantial resources of the firm to achieve meaningful change to our society. Based on our role in having litigated against and negotiated settlements (which included key terms addressing contracting issues) with the largest health insurers in the country and our longstanding and ongoing representation of medical providers and national, state and county medical societies, we have a profound understanding of the issues impacting health care providers today. As such, we are uniquely positioned to detect trends and to provide a wide range of services to our healthcare clients in connection with every aspect of their dealings with health insurers—from nationwide litigation to the negotiation of contracts that protect the interests of providers on a going-forward basis.

A HISTORY OF SUPPORTING MEANINGFUL CHANGE

While our lawyers have regularly fought corporate and governmental abuses and recovered significant monetary awards for our clients, we pride ourselves on going beyond the recovery of money to achieve meaningful change for our clients. The numerous, revolutionary settlements that Edith Kallas and Joe Whatley have negotiated with most of the health insurance companies in the country provide the most noted recent examples of the use of litigation to achieve meaningful change, with extensive injunctive relief allowing doctors to practice medicine with protections from the abuses of managed care. But those settlements are only part of a decades-long history of the firm’s lawyers fighting to effect meaningful societal change.

The lawyers at the firm have devoted their careers to achieving such change. For example, Joe Whatley spent a substantial part of his career representing historically black universities in their effort to expand and improve their programs and facilities to overcome the effects of de jure segregation in the South. He was also involved in lawsuits that recovered hundreds of millions of dollars against life insurance companies for continuing to charge African Americans more than Caucasians. Jack Drake began his career representing mental health patients and obtaining path-breaking institutional relief to ensure that those patients are treated in the least restrictive environment consistent with their condition. Edith Kallas has been a pioneer in fighting the abuses of managed care companies, bringing some of the earliest actions to challenge their payment practices and interference with the doctor/patient relationship on behalf of both patients and doctors more than a decade ago, and has recently championed the cause of patients with preexisting medical conditions facing the loss of healthcare coverage.

Today, the lawyers of the firm are: leading the litigation of nationwide classes of providers against health insurers for antitrust violations; representing hospitals, hospital systems and physicians, on an individual and class basis, against health insurers for wrongful reimbursement practices in courts and arbitrations; representing ambulatory surgical centers and durable medical equipment providers on a variety of issues related to their dealings with managed care companies; negotiating in-network contractual relationships for providers; and resolving issues for providers and medical associations and their members with managed care companies thorough pre-suit negotiations.