Author Profile
Senior Partner and President of Helmer, Martins, Rice & Popham Co., L.P.A., Cincinnati, OH
A highly accomplished attorney for 37 years, Mr. Helmer has successfully represented clients in numerous civil rights, personal injury, securities fraud, admiralty, and business lawsuits. Approximately half of Mr. Helmer’s practice, which is exclusively devoted to litigation, involves the representation of employees “blowing the whistle” on fraudulent government contractors. His False Claims Act cases have recovered nearly one billion dollars for the tax payers. Mr. Helmer has obtained several multi-million dollar jury verdicts and has been trial counsel in over 300 published legal decisions.
In 1984 he rediscovered the Federal False Claims Act, enacted at the urging of President Lincoln in 1863 but long dormant. He is credited with revitalizing this major fraud fighting tool which has returned nearly 40 billion stolen tax payers’ dollars.
In 1985, 1986, and 1989, he testified before Congress concerning amendments to the False Claims Act and all of his suggested changes were ultimately enacted into law. In 1994 he published the first comprehensive treatise on the Act. The False Claims Act: Whistleblower Litigation, Sixth Edition, is now available through Bloomberg BNA. In 2008 Mr. Helmer successfully argued that “presentment” was not a liability element in the Allison Engine False Claims case before the United States Supreme Court in a 9-0 decision against former solicitor general, Theodore Olson. Congress again sought his help in 2008 and his testimony then helped shape the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009 as well as the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
Mr. Helmer is an honors graduate of Denison University where he played varsity football. His law degree is from the University Of Cincinnati College Of Law where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Cincinnati Law Review and was inducted into the Order of the Court. He began his legal career as a law clerk for the Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio.
His hard work and dedication to the law has been recognized many times including as one of the top ten civil litigators in Ohio by The National Law Journal and as one of the Best Lawyers in America since 1987 in numerous categories including Litigation, Labor and Employment Law, Personal Injury Litigation, Corporate Litigation, Bet-the-Company Litigation, Commercial Litigation and Trusts and Estates Litigation. He is a recipient of the College of Law’s Nicholas Longworth III Alumni Achievement Award for distinguished professional service, as well as the Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Cincinnati Law Review in 2012 and the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008 by the Taxpayers Against Fraud Education Committee, the premier national whistleblower organization.
