Florida manufacturer MWI wins 18-year fight with whistleblower

One of the longest-running whistleblower cases in U.S. history has come to an end, with a loss for Florida resident Robert Purcell in his 18-year legal battle against pump manufacturer MWI.

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to review the case as part of its upcoming docket, which means MWI’s win on appeal in the case stands.

Purcell, a former sales executive at MWI, alleged that MWI used public money to pay millions of dollars to a Nigerian strongman in the 1990s.

In 2013, Purcell won a jury verdict in the case and was awarded $7.5 million on each of two counts under the False Claims Act.

But that verdict was thrown out and the U.S. Court of Appeals handed MWI a win, finding that it wasn’t liable and “the government failed to establish that MWI knowingly made a false claim.”

The case drew media attention for years because former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush once provided consulting services to MWI, and helped market the company’s products in Nigeria. But a judge ruled Bush’s involvement was irrelevant to the central question of the case and could pose a distraction.

The company sent out a statement saying it was pleased with the final outcome.

“MWI is a small [fourth-generation] family-owned business located in Deerfield Beach since 1926, and this case has been extremely costly in terms of the legal fees incurred and the lost business since 1998,” corporate attorney William Bucknam said in the statement. MWI has offices in Orlando and other cities.

The National Association of Manufacturers had submitted a brief to the courts on MWI’s behalf. Purcell was unbowed Tuesday. “As my attorney says, it’s a terrible injustice,” he said by phone Tuesday evening. “If we’d been able to present all the evidence, regarding the political influence that was brought to bear, it would have been different.”

The case faced an uphill battle to get a review from the Supreme Court, partly because Purcell and his attorney were forced to file the final petition without the federal government’s help. The Department of Justice represented Purcell for years, but didn’t seek the highest court’s opinion in the end.

Purcell, 82, accused MWI of fraud connected to at least $28 million in funding from the U.S. Export-Import Bank, used to pay a Nigerian agent to help the company sell water pumps to the African nation.

MWI argued that every rule and law that came attached with the loans was followed. The company also pointed out that the loans were eventually paid back in full.

In the early 1990s, MWI had received eight loans totaling $74 million from the federal government’s Export-Import Bank to bankroll its Nigerian projects. A large part of those funds, at least a third, wound up in the hands of one man in Nigeria — Mohammed Indimi — who helped the company arrange its deals.

The crux of the dispute was whether MWI should have made more complete disclosures to the federal government about those payments. For years, the word “bribe” also came up in court filings by the whistleblower’s lawyer — and even by one of the federal judges on the case — but MWI successfully fought to keep that word from being mentioned to a jury.

The government took over the case in 2002, standing in Purcell’s shoes.

Purcell has had the same attorney throughout the case: Joe Aronica of Duane Morris. MWI has retained numerous lawyers throughout the years, chiefly Washington D.C.-based Crowell & Moring.

MWI was represented at trial and on appeal by lead counsel Robert Rhoad of Shepard Mullin Richter & Hampton LLP and by co-lead counsel Brian Tully McLaughlin as well as Charlotte Gillingham and Richard L. Beizer of Crowell & Moring LLP.