Contact Information

Location: Boston, Massachusetts
Phone: 617-395-9573
Fax: 855-395-5525
E-mail: ijr@mrdklaw.com

ILYAS J. RONA

Ilyas J. Rona is a founding partner of the firm. For well over a decade, Mr. Rona has successfully represented plaintiffs in various types of complex civil litigation.  Mr. Rona has helped his clients obtain hundreds of millions of dollars in favorable recoveries.

Mr. Rona’s experience is diverse.  He has successfully litigated large commercial cases, such as fraud claims, consumer protection actions, attorney and accountant malpractice, insurance disputes, and bankruptcy litigation. Mr. Rona has also successfully litigated qui tam actions under the false claims act.  He has helped his clients and their families achieve significant compensation in cases for wrongful death or personal injury, including industrial/construction accidents, medical malpractice, and negligence cases. And he has helped his clients achieve fair compensation in employment cases involving wrongful termination and retaliation.

Mr. Rona focuses his practice on tough cases where complexity is the defining element. This includes fraud cases where the scope of conduct is massive or where vital proof is scattered across millions of pages of documents. And it also includes cases where plaintiffs must navigate complicated scientific, medical, technical, or financial issues in order to succeed. Despite such challenges, Mr. Rona has assisted clients in making sizeable recoveries.

Successful representations include the following matters:

• Mr. Rona was a member of the trial team that obtained a $142 million verdict against Pfizer for fraudulent marketing of the drug Neurontin for various off-label uses. This verdict was made possible because of a painstaking process to review more than 4 million pages of documents, which Mr. Rona oversaw. His familiarity with the documents and ability to locate key pieces of evidence was crucial to having the jury verdict of $47.4 million tripled under RICO.

• Mr. Rona assisted a construction worker in recovering $1.6 from the owner of a backhoe who negligently failed to ensure a safe work area, which caused the backhoe to strike the worker in back. The impact caused significant damage to his lower back, including a bulging disc, significant back and leg pain, and multiple surgical procedures.

• Mr. Rona conducted the discovery in a non-intervened qui tam case against Pfizer relating to the off-label marketing of the drug Detrol. Mr. Rona took the depositions of current and former employees of Pfizer and was primarily responsible for finding the key documents within a database of 1 million pages. His depositions and these key documents substantiated the relators’ claims of off-label marketing. As a result, Pfizer agreed to a $25 million settlement to settle the allegations of false claims.

• Mr. Rona assisted the family of an electrical sign installer in recovering $2.4 million in compensation from the Holyoke Mall’s owner after the sign installer was electrocuted while replacing interior neon lighting at the mall that was susceptible to becoming energized.

• Mr. Rona assisted a whistleblower in litigating a non-intervened qui tam case against Pfizer for its off-label marketing of the drug Neurontin. The qui tam action resulted a $430 million settlement with Pfizer and one of the largest recoveries by a relator in a non-intervened case.

• Mr. Rona assisted a bankruptcy trustee in recovering $7.4 million from insurance companies that provided insurance to Molten Metal Technology’s officers and directors. Mr. Rona managed the system to collect and review more than 600,000 pages of documents that were located in various states. This review helped demonstrate that the officers and directors inflated the value of company assets, issued incorrect financial statements, and concealed unresolvable technological, financial, and environmental problems. The trustee claimed that the officers and directors breached their fiduciary duties of due care, loyalty, and good faith to the company and creditors.

• Mr. Rona also assisted Molten Metal Technology’s bankruptcy trustee in recovering $9.6 million in settlement of claims that Lockheed Martin Corp. received an avoidable preference through a restructuring of its joint venture with MMT that was designed to avoid tax liability and remove the lone valuable asset before it entered receivership.

• Mr. Rona also assisted the bankruptcy trustee in recovering $3.5 million recovered to settle of claims that Molten Metal Technology’s other corporate partner, CBS/Westinghouse, received a fraudulent transfer by coercively divesting its half interest in a nuclear waste treatment plant be selling it a grossly inflated price.

Areas of Practice

  • Civil Litigation

  • Complex Litigation

  • Fraud Litigation

  • Consumer Protection

  • Bankruptcy Litigation

  • Wrongful Death

  • Medical Malpractice

  • Pharmaceutical Litigation

  • False Claims Act Litigation

  • Civil Rights

  • Appeals

Litigation Percentage

  • 100% of Practice Devoted to Litigation

Bar Admissions

  • U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, 2022

  • U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, 2005

  • U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, 2001

  • Massachusetts, 1999

Education

  • Northwestern University School of Law, Chicago, Illinois

    • J.D. – 1998

  • Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island

    • A.B. (Magna Cum Laude) – 1995

    • Major: Political Science

Past Employment Positions

  • Milligan Coughlin LLC, Senior Counsel, 2012  –  2014

  • Greene LLP, Partner, 2009 – 2012

  • Greene & Hoffman, PC, Associate, 1999 – 2009

Pro Bono Activities

  • Health Care Access

  • Scientific/research misconduct

  • Authorship disputes