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# DoJ Policy Wants Coordination of Penalties Against Companies
- URL: https://www.fdaweb.com/doj-policy-wants-coordination-of-penalties-against-companies/
- Published: 2018-07-09T12:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-15T00:17:42.000Z
- Author: David McFarland
- Tags: Drugs, Devices, #legacy-id-D5141819

Two Hyman, Phelps, and McNamara attorneys say the Justice Department (DoJ) is quietly implementing a policy asking that various law enforcement entities appropriately coordinate in imposing penalties on a company, to “avoid the risk of repeated punishments that may exceed what is necessary to rectify the harm and deter future violations.” Writing in their firm’s *FDA Law Blog*, attorneys **Anne Walsh** and **Rachel Hunt** says the new policy also requires the department to consider the impact on innocent stakeholders (such as employees, customers, and investors) who seek to resolve problems, and to assess whether devoting resources to additional enforcement against an old scheme is more valuable than fighting a new one.

Key features of the policy are: 

- criminal enforcement activity cannot be used to persuade a company to pay a larger settlement in a civil case, such as under the False Claims Act.
- DoJ components must coordinate with each other to achieve an overall equitable result;
- coordination also is expected among federal, state, local, and foreign enforcement authorities; and
- identification of factors for determining when multiple penalties would be warranted.

Walsh and Hunt say that while the new policy appears to be promising, its usefulness is limited by the fact that it is binding only on the department. “Although DoJ handles enforcement actions on behalf of many federal government agencies,” the two write, “including FDA, it does not speak for all federal agencies (e.g., Securities and Exchange Commission). Foreign regulators and state and local enforcement agencies must buy into DoJ policy for true effectiveness.”