Reuben Guttman. Photo by Diego M. Radzinschi

A former Celgene Corp. saleswoman who blew the whistle on allegedly improper marketing tactics at the drug company was cleared Tuesday to collect a $78 million bounty that's been held up amid a dispute between whistleblower attorney Reuben Guttman and his former law firm, Grant & Eisenhofer.

U.S. District Judge Philip Gutierrez in Los Angeles agreed to strike down an attorney's charging lien that Grant & Eisenhofer asserted against a whistleblower award heading to Beverly Brown, a former Celgene employee who brought a False Claims Act lawsuit against the company. Brown's false claims suit alleged that Celgene promoted a pair of cancer drugs, Thalomid and Revlimid, for off-label uses that weren't approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The underlying Celgene suit, a qui tam action in which Brown pursued claims on behalf of the U.S. government, ended in a $280 million settlement announced in July. As the whistleblower, Brown was later awarded 28 percent of that recovery—$78.4 million—but hadn't been able to collect in light of Grant & Eisenhofer's attorney lien, according to Tuesday's ruling. The law firm asserted the lien before a final decision on how large Brown's award would be.

On Tuesday, Gutierrez granted a motion to strike the lien, and directed the court in the Celgene case to release the full whistleblower award to an attorney-client trust account held by Spertus, Landes & Umhofer, the law firm that's representing Brown in the Grant & Eisenhofer dispute. James Spertus, one of Brown's lead lawyers, said on Wednesday that he believes Gutierrez made the right decision when striking the lien.

“The court's ruling yesterday was the correct ruling under the law and the facts of this case and will save more than a year of contentious litigation over an issue that Grant & Eisenhofer should have never created in the first place,” Spertus said.

A representative for Grant & Eisenhofer declined to comment Wednesday.

The decision to release Brown's whistleblower award comes amid a wider dispute pitting her and her lawyers in the Celgene case on one side against Grant & Eisenhofer on the other. The law firm alleged that Brown and her lawyers conspired to take the Celgene matter out from under Grant & Eisenhofer after it had spent several years as her legal counsel.

The suit grew out of Grant & Eisenhofer's past work on the Celgene case. That work ended around the time Guttman, a former Grant & Eisenhofer director who served as Brown's lead counsel in the Celgene matter, left the plaintiffs firm in 2015. Guttman went on to form the Washington, D.C.-based whistleblower boutique Guttman, Buschner & Brooks, which continues to represent Brown.

After Celgene agreed to settle, putting Brown in line for a massive whistleblower award, Grant & Eisenhofer took aim at Guttman and his new firm in one lawsuit, while also filing a separate lawsuit that targeted Brown and two other law firms. Those firms are Bienert, Miller & Katzman, local counsel in the Celgene false claims suit, and the Columbia, South Carolina, firm of Richard Harpootlian, who began serving as co-counsel for Brown in the Celgene case after Guttman left Grant & Eisenhofer, according to court documents.

Grant & Eisenhofer said in court papers that it racked up some $7 million in expenses while representing Brown between 2009 and 2015. The firm also alleged that it deserved a portion of Brown's whistleblower bounty, and accused Guttman and the others of scheming to deny Grant & Eisenhofer a share. Guttman and the other lawyers involved in the Celgene case have all denied Grant & Eisenhofer's claims.

In December, Gutierrez dismissed most of the allegations against Brown, the Bienert firm and Harpootlian, leaving only a claim for quantum meruit.

The Grant & Eisenhofer lawsuit targeting Guttman and his new firm was originally assigned to a different judge in Los Angeles federal court, but has since been transferred to Gutierrez and consolidated with the case against Brown and her other lawyers. The judge's ruling on Tuesday doesn't have a direct impact on claims against Guttman, which remain pending.