On February 20, 2025, during a speech to the Federal Bar Association’s annual qui tam conference, Michael Granston, Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Commercial Litigation Branch at the U.S. Department of Justice...more
In United States ex rel. Feliciano v. Ardoin, the D.C. Circuit joined every other circuit to consider the issue, holding that a pro se litigant cannot bring a False Claims Act (FCA) case. The court’s reasoning was...more
Last month, the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey held that a private company, Allstate Insurance Company, could proceed with its whistleblower action against a clinical laboratory, Phoenix Toxicology and Lab...more
In United States v. Regeneron, the District of Massachusetts Court recently joined the Sixth and Eighth Circuits in requiring the government to show a direct tie between kickbacks and referrals that proximately caused claims...more
A large damage award serves as a significant reminder to file an appearance in a False Claims Act (FCA) case.
In late August of 2022, the Government filed suit against AZ Diabetic and the owner, Hisham Zaghal (Zaghal),...more
Recently, two ophthalmology practice groups — Kleiman Evangelista Eye Centers of Texas (KEEC) and SouthEast Eye Specialists, PLLC (SEES) — reached large settlements with the U.S. government over allegations that the groups’...more
On Sept. 13, 2023, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas announced a settlement with Oliver Street Dermatology Management LLC. Oliver Street agreed to pay the United States $8.892 million to resolve...more
On March 29, 2023, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan granted the parties’ joint stipulation for dismissal in U.S. ex. rel. Godsholl v. Covenant Healthcare, following three settlements of the...more
In U.S. v. Genesis Global Healthcare, 2023 WL 3656925 (S.D. Ga. May 25, 2023), a Georgia district court denied three (3) Motions to Dismiss the Second Amended Complaint filed in a qui tam action brought by relators under the...more
Earlier this year, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma granted Washington state’s motion to intervene to transfer venue to the Western District of Washington in James Siegel, M.D. v. Novo Nordisk,...more
A Kansas federal court recently ruled against the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) in litigation arising out of a discovery dispute brought by the relator and defendant in a separate, pending FCA action. See...more
On June 1, 2023, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favor of whistleblower plaintiffs (referred to as “relators”) in consolidated False Claims Act (“FCA”) cases in a decision that clarified the application of the FCA’s...more
On January 13, 2023, the Supreme Court granted a writ of certiorari to petitioners in two False Claims Act cases to determine whether the False Claims Act’s knowledge requirement reaches defendants who can offer an...more
Last month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed summary judgement against an employee-whistleblower who had claimed that her former employer retaliated against her in violation of the False Claims Act’s...more
The U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland recently weighed in on the appropriate causation standard when evaluating whether a claim “result[s] from” a violation of the Anti-Kickback Statute sufficient to constitute...more
Last month, the Central District of California granted the government’s affirmative motion for partial summary judgment in U.S. v. Reliance Medical Sys., 2022 WL 524062 (C.D. Cal. Feb. 2, 2022). The Reliance Medical case...more
The Seventh Circuit recently reversed a lower court’s ruling that an amended complaint in a qui tam lawsuit filed under the False Claims Act (FCA) alleging fraudulent anesthesiology billing practices failed to meet the...more
The Western District of New York recently allowed the government to intervene in an FCA action brought months after the government’s initial notice of declination and more than seven years after the government initiated its...more
The Fifth Circuit recently reversed a district court’s dismissal of a motion to return property after the government’s seizure of protected attorney-client information in Harbor Healthcare Sys., L.P. v. United States, 5 F.4th...more
In Stop Illinois Health Care Fraud, LLC v. Sayeed, No. 12-CV-09306, 2021 WL 2331338 (N.D. Ill. June 8, 2021), an Illinois district court issued an order after a recent bench trial finding that the defendants violated the...more
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit dismissed a relator-pharmacist’s False Claim Act (FCA) case, holding that the pharmacist claims, largely based on a stolen Medical Expenses Summary, lacked merit. In U.S. ex....more
On June 18, 2021, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia certified an interlocutory appeal in favor of Honeywell in a case involving FCA common liability. The appeal will concern the question of whether...more
As vaccination rates rise, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to reverberate through 2021. These reverberations also impacted the healthcare fraud and abuse landscape that is the basis of The FCA Insider’s coverage. To-date,...more
In U.S. ex rel. Freedman v. Bayada Home Health Care, Inc., No. 3:19-cv-18753-FLW-ZNQ, 2021 WL 1904735 (D.N.J. May 12, 2021), a New Jersey District Court found that the relator failed to plead a cognizable theory of liability...more
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held, in connection with an interlocutory appeal, that the False Claims Act (FCA) anti-retaliation provisions protect relators from post-employment retaliatory conduct. In...more