Eric R. Havian
(San Francisco)

Eric, a partner with Phillips & Cohen, has extensive experience in representing whistleblowers in defense contractor fraud and other types of fraud cases.

Two defense companies paid a total of $26 million to settle two whistleblower cases he handled. A separate qui tam case resulted in a book wholesaler and its former parent company paying $18.5 million to federal and state governments to settle fraud charges.

Eric also has been retained by numerous local governments to pursue state False Claims Act cases against companies for defrauding those agencies, including the County of Los Angeles, the City of San Francisco and other large municipal entities.

He is a frequent speaker at conferences on the False Claims Act and qui tam lawsuits. He also has published articles about whistleblowing and government contract fraud as well as how the False Claims Act applies to fraud in the environmental field.

Eric graduated cum laude in 1981 from Harvard Law School, where he won the Ames Moot Court Competition.

He was an Assistant United States Attorney in the Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Francisco from 1987 through 1994 and was the lead prosecutor for defense procurement fraud cases. During his tenure, Eric prosecuted numerous multi-million dollar cases of fraud against the federal government.

Before joining the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eric was a litigation associate at the San Francisco office of Heller, Ehrman, White & McAuliffe, where he practiced complex litigation.

Eric has taught courses on fraud at Stanford Law School and at the University of California School of Law (Boalt Hall). He has been a guest lecturer at Hastings College of the Law and has taught various seminars to Assistant U.S. Attorneys at the Attorney General's Advocacy Institute in Washington, D.C.

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