Rule 9(b)

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The FCA continues to be the federal government’s primary civil enforcement tool for investigating allegations that healthcare providers or government contractors defrauded the federal government. In the coming weeks, we are taking a closer look at recent legal developments involving the FCA. This week, we examine recent court decisions requiring relators to plead actual claims to satisfy the requirements of Rule 9(b) in order to avoid dismissal.

Federal courts have continued to examine the particularity of the pleading required by Rule 9(b) in the context of FCA claims. Although courts generally agree that a relator must plead the “who, what, when, where, and how” of the alleged fraud, the manner in which courts have applied this standard and the types of allegations considered sufficient to satisfy Rule 9(b) continues to vary significantly.Continue Reading FCA Deeper Dive: Rule 9(b) and Pleading Actual Claims

A recent Sixth Circuit opinion in U.S. ex rel. Hirt v. Walgreen Co. should come as welcome news for FCA defendants concerned about the implications of the Sixth Circuit’s application last year, for the first time, of a “relaxed” standard for pleading false claims under Rule 9(b) in U.S. ex rel. Prather v. Brookdale Senior Living Communities, Inc.
Continue Reading Relax, Sixth Circuit Opinion Indicates Rule 9(b) Pleading Requirement Still Has Bite

On September 1, 2016, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit reversed the dismissal of an FCA lawsuit by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, and in doing so, evaluated the particularity required to survive a motion to dismiss under Rule 9(b) as it relates to both a relator’s obligation to plead specific claims and the specifics of the underlying fraudulent conduct at issue.
Continue Reading Seventh Circuit Rejects Specific Claims Requirement for 9(b), Maintains a High Bar for Medical Necessity Allegations

The Sixth Circuit recently became the first appellate court to consider and reject FCA liability based on a healthcare provider’s alleged false attestation of compliance with the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH) Act’s meaningful use objectives. U.S. ex rel. Sheldon v. Kettering Health Network, 2016 WL 861399 (6th Cir. March 7, 2016). The HITECH Act was designed to encourage the adoption of Electronic Health Record (EHR) technology by healthcare providers through the creation of incentive payments for eligible providers.  As a condition of receiving those incentive payments, the HITECH Act requires healthcare providers to meet meaningful use objectives and compliance measures concerning the adoption of EHR technology.
Continue Reading Sixth Circuit Affirms Dismissal of FCA Action Related to HITECH Meaningful Use Payments

The FCA continues to be the federal government’s primary civil enforcement tool for investigating allegations that healthcare providers or government contractors defrauded the federal government. In the coming weeks, we will take a closer look at recent legal developments involving the FCA. This week, we examine recent court decisions considering the level of specificity required of a relator under Rule 9(b) in pleading the alleged FCA fraud scheme.

While analyzing the circumstances of fraud is necessarily a case-by-case analysis, courts have applied decidedly different approaches to examining certain components of a fraudulent scheme, including the “who” and “when” requirements.Continue Reading FCA Deeper Dive: Rule 9(b) and the Pleading of the Alleged Fraud Scheme

For the first time since August 2011, the Sixth Circuit examined the standard for pleading False Claims Act (FCA) violations with particularity under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 9(b)—in particular, when the requirement that a relator plead an actual false claim submitted to the government can be “relaxed,” if at all. The case, U.S. ex rel. Eberhard v. Physicians Choice Laboratory Services, LLC (PCLS), No. 15-5691 (6th Cir. Feb. 23, 2016), involved allegations that PCLS, a medical testing services provider, submitted false claims to Medicare and Medicaid as a result of a purported scheme by PCLS to pay kickbacks—in the form of a commission on sales of PCLS products and services—to an independent sales force to induce them to solicit the referral of samples to PCLS for testing, in violation of the Anti-Kickback Statute. The relator, a former sales employee of PCLS, appealed the district court’s dismissal of his complaint for failure to plead any actual false claims submitted to the government with particularity under Rule 9(b), arguing that the district court should have applied a “relaxed” Rule 9(b) standard because of the relator’s purported “personal knowledge” of the false claims.

In affirming the district court’s ruling, the Sixth Circuit explained at the outset that unlike “some circuits hold[ing] that it is sufficient for a plaintiff to allege particular details of a scheme to submit false claims paired with reliable indicia that lead to a strong inference that claims were actually submitted, we have joined the Fourth, Eighth, and Eleventh Circuits in requiring ‘representative samples’ of the alleged fraudulent conduct.” Solely based on the relator’s failure to plead any false claims submitted in connection with the alleged kickback scheme, the Sixth Circuit ruled that the relator could not meet the pleading requirements of Rule 9(b).Continue Reading No Time to Relax: Sixth Circuit Reviews Rule 9(b) Standard in FCA Case for First Time in Nearly Five Years

The FCA continues to be the federal government’s primary civil enforcement tool for investigating allegations that healthcare providers or government contractors defrauded the federal government. In the coming weeks, we will take a closer look at recent legal developments involving the FCA. This week, we examine recent court decisions that have required a relator only to plead a reliable indicia of the submission of false claims to satisfy Rule 9(b).

Relators in a pair of cases from the Middle District of Florida succeeded in satisfying Rule 9(b) under a relaxed pleading standard. In U.S. ex rel. Space Coast Medical Associates, LLP, 94 F. Supp. 3d 1250 (M.D. Fla. Feb. 6, 2015), the district court held relators had pleaded “sufficient indicia of reliability that claims were submitted” by alleging “particularized knowledge of the Defendants’ billing process and of alleged fraudulent bills,” as well as “individual Medicare patients who received treatment.”Continue Reading FCA Deeper Dive: Rule 9(b) and the Pleading of Actual Claims Under a Relaxed Standard

The FCA continues to be the federal government’s primary civil enforcement tool for investigating allegations that healthcare providers or government contractors defrauded the federal government. In the coming weeks, we will take a closer look at recent legal developments involving the FCA. This week, we examine recent court decisions requiring relators to plead actual claims to satisfy the requirements of Rule 9(b) in order to avoid dismissal.

In the past, the First Circuit has shifted between requiring the identification of a specific false claim and applying a more flexible standard. Compare U.S. ex rel. Karvelas v. Melrose-Wakefield Hosp., 360 F.3d 220, 232 (1st Cir. 2004) (applying strict standard) abrogated on other grounds, Allison Engine Co. v. U.S. ex rel. Sanders, 553 U.S. 662 (2008), with U.S. ex rel. Duxbury v. Ortho Biotech Prods., L.P., 579 F.3d 13, 29 (1st Cir. 2009) (applying flexible standard). Last year, the First Circuit explained its approach as requiring “relators to connect allegations of fraud to particular false claims for payment, rather than a fraudulent scheme in the abstract.”Continue Reading FCA Deeper Dive: Rule 9(b) and the Pleading of Actual Claims

The D.C. Circuit reversed the district court’s dismissal of a serial relator’s qui tam lawsuit under the FCA’s first-to-file bar in U.S. ex rel. Heath v. AT&T, Inc., finding that the relator’s two qui tam lawsuits targeted factually distinct types of frauds. The D.C. Circuit further determined that the relator’s qui tam lawsuit satisfied the pleading requirements of Rule 9(b).
Continue Reading D.C. Circuit Reverses District Court Dismissal of Qui Tam Lawsuit

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From the Bass, Berry & Sims Blog Network

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