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| The Civil Division of the United States Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York represents the United States in a broad array of defensive and affirmative civil lawsuits arising primarily in the United States District and Bankruptcy Courts for the Eastern District of New York and the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, as well as in New York State courts. Its jurisdiction covers one of the most diverse and densely populated areas in the country. The division has two offices; a main office, located in Brooklyn, is presently staffed by 39 Assistant U.S. Attorneys and four Special Assistant U.S. Attorneys on assignment from other agencies; and a recently opened Long Island office, located at the new federal courthouse in Central Islip, is presently staffed by six Assistant U.S. Attorneys. The Civil Division defends United States government agencies and personnel in various civil suits. These include tort (personal injury) actions, medical malpractice claims arising out of treatment at Veterans Hospitals or other federally-supported health facilities, challenges to agency determinations, such as denial of social security disability benefits, and decisions made by the Immigration and Naturalization Service to exclude or deport aliens. Among other areas of its defense practice are suits involving claims of discrimination in federal employment and class actions challenging statutes, regulations and agency procedures. Among its most recent noteworthy defensive cases are a tort case in which the government overcame hundreds of millions of dollars of claims brought by several hundred Long Island property owners for alleged negligent construction of shoreline jetties by the Army Corps of Engineers, and our successful defense of a case challenging the First Amendment rights of members of the United States Congress. In addition to defensive cases, the Civil Division has actively brought civil prosecutions and lawsuits on many fronts. In recent years it has recovered tens of millions of dollars owed to the United States as a result of fraudulent billing of federally-funded health care programs by providers, including nursing homes, hospitals, laboratories and physicians. In other suits brought under the False Claims Act, the Civil Division has recovered millions of dollars from defense contractors that defrauded the United States. Court-ordered monitorships and injunctions established in suits commenced under the civil RICO statute have helped purge industries and labor unions of control by organized crime. The office has also been at the forefront in filing a series of complex asset forfeiture actions, both civil and criminal, against national and international money launderers, drug cartels, organized crime organizations and white-collar criminals. In the past five years alone, this office has successfully obtained over $200 million in forfeiture awards. In addition, environmental actions have brought protection to endangered species, cleaned up toxic waste sites and required the City of New York to build a filtration plant to protect a portion of New York City's water supply. The Civil Division also is responsible for the collection of fines, forfeitures, restitution awards and other penalties. In the most recent fiscal year ended September 30, 2000, the Civil Division recovered over $63 million. |