On February 7, 2023, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that settlements and judgments under the False Claims Act exceeded $2.2 billion during the 2022 fiscal year and that the government posted its second-highest number of settlements and judgments in a single year.
While the settlement of the False Claims Act case against Lance Armstrong has generated a press release, a quick online search didn’t produce a copy of the actual agreement. So I filed a Freedom of Information Act request and the next day the Department of Justice provided me a copy of the Lance Armstrong settlement agreement. Thank you, Team DOJ! Below is my take on that agreement and what it tells us about the case.
The settlement amount
The settlement agreement provides that Lance Armstrong will pay $5 million to the Government and $1.65 million to the relator Floyd Landis. To put this in context, the Postal Service had paid about $40 million to sponsor Team Postal. Trebling that amount, and throwing in civil penalties and investigative costs, bumps up potential damages to well over $100 million. The settlement amount was thus less than 7 cents on the dollar.
Damages was always the Government’s weakness – because there weren’t any. This should have been apparent at the outset from the contemporaneous USPS reports on how much publicity and new revenue the Team Postal sponsorship had generated. These reports were poppycock, of course, but they still posed insurmountable problems for the Government’s case.
Contractors are now familiar with the Supreme Court’s June 2016 decision in Universal Health Services, Inc. v. United States ex rel. Escobar [PDF]. That decision recognizes False Claims Act liability for implied false certifications. But it also holds that FCA liability is available only when the false statement or omission is “material” to the Government’s decision to pay a claim. Our discussion of Escobar is available here.
Over the last 18 months, courts across the country have been asked to determine the impact of the Escobar decision. Ten of the eleven U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeal have interpreted Escobar. Numerous U.S. District Courts have applied Escobar in resolving pre-trial motions. Cases based on “garden-variety breaches of contract or regulatory violations” are being thrown out. Even jury verdicts are being overturned for insufficient evidence of materiality. There is one inescapable conclusion from these post-Escobar decisions: materiality matters.
In this entry, we discuss two recent decisions that illustrate the impact of Escobar. One reaffirms the notion that, after Escobar, minor non-compliance with a regulatory requirement will not normally support FCA liability. The other highlights the critical role the government’s actions can play in establishing materiality. Together they reject jury verdicts imposing more than $1 billion in False Claims Act liability.
After nearly a decade of litigation, justice was finally meted out in an extreme case of Government over-reach against a government contractor. The Government had sought to recover over $1.6 million from a government contractor whose subcontractor had underpaid a handful of employees by $9,900.
When all was said and done, a federal appellate court finally rejected the Government’s legal theory as essentially frivolous and ordered it to pay the contractor’s attorney fees, estimated at roughly $500,000. When the Government expressed concern that this would have a “chilling effect” on its efforts to vigorously enforce the False Claims Act, the court stated: “One should hope so.” The case is called U.S. ex rel. Wall v. Circle C Constr., LLC, No. 16-6169, (6th Cir. Aug. 18, 2017).
The story starts when the prime contractor, Circle C Construction, won a contract to construct buildings at the Fort Campbell military base. Circle C hired a subcontractor, Phase Tech, to perform the electrical work. The prime contract required compliance with the Davis-Bacon Act, which is similar to the Service Contract Act but applies to construction work. Like the Service Contract Act, the Davis Bacon Act requires the prime contractor and all subcontractors to pay construction workers the prevailing wages and benefits set by the Department of Labor. The Davis-Bacon Act also requires that the contractor submit certified payrolls as a condition of contract payment.
While Circle C did not have a written contract with its subcontractor Phase Tech, it did provide Phase Tech with the Wage Determinations from its prime contract. But Circle C did not verify whether Phase Tech was in compliance with the Davis Bacon Act. Phase Tech did not submit payroll certifications for two years after the project commenced, and later contended it was not aware it had to do so.
Eventually, one of Phase Tech’s employees brought a qui tam False Claims Act action against both Phase Tech and Circle C based on the under-payment of wages. Phase Tech settled the case by agreeing to pay $15,000, leaving Circle C as the remaining defendant. The Government agreed to take over the case from the employee and pursued the claim against Circle C.
Initially, the case did not go well for Circle C. The federal trial court hearing the case granted plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment and damages of $555,000 (the entire cost of the electrical scope of work on the project), which was trebled to a total award of $1.66 million against Circle C.
The Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in Universal Health Services, Inc. v. United States ex rel. Escobar, No. 15-7 (U.S. June 16, 2016), upholds the viability of the implied certification theory of False Claims Act liability. But it also makes cases arising from minor instances of noncompliance much harder to prove. The Court held that a knowing failure to disclose a violation of a material statutory, regulatory, or contractual requirement can create False Claims Act liability. The requirement need not be an express condition of payment, but it must be material to the Government’s decision to pay.
The requirement for proof of a misleading half-truth
Those hoping that the Court would eliminate implied certification altogether will be disappointed with the decision. It opens up the possibility of new False Claims Act cases in the Seventh Circuit and in other jurisdictions that had rejected the implied certification theory or limited its application to conditions of payment. Some cases that might have been thrown out on a motion to dismiss might stand a better chance of surviving through discovery and trial.
The Court nevertheless takes strong steps to limit misuse of the implied certification theory. According to the opinion in Escobar, liability under the implied certification theory can be imposed only when two conditions are satisfied. First, the claim for payment must make “specific representations about the goods or services provided.” An invoice that makes no affirmative statement about the quality of a contractor’s goods or services cannot be the basis for an implied certification.
[UPDATE: The Supreme Court resolved the Escobar case in a unanimous decision published on June 16, 2015. A link to our discussion of the Court’s opinion is available here.]
In some courts in the United States today, a government contractor or a healthcare provider seeking reimbursement from a federal program can violate the False Claims Act even when its work is satisfactory and its invoices are correct. Under the theory of “implied certification,” a minor instance of non-compliance with one of the thousands of applicable statutes, regulations, and contract provisions can be the basis for a federal investigation, years of litigation, as well as fines, penalties, suspension and debarment, even imprisonment of company personnel.
This week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Universal Health Services, Inc. v. United States ex rel. Escobar, Docket No. 15-7, a case involving the viability of the implied certification theory. Here, we look at the questions posed during oral argument to see if we can infer how the Court might resolve the case.
The Supreme Court agreed to consider two questions posed in Escobar. First, the Court agreed to address the current split in the circuits as to the viability of the implied certification theory. The First Circuit’s decision in United States ex rel. Escobar v. Universal Health Services, Inc., 780 F.3d 504 (1st Cir. 2015), broadly adopts implied certification. The Seventh Circuit’s decision in United States v. Sanford-Brown, Ltd., 788 F.3d 696 (7th Cir. 2015), firmly rejects it.
Read the press about Judge James Gwin’s decision in United States ex rel. Barko v. Halliburton Co., No. 1:05-cv-1276 (D.D.C. Mar. 6, 2014), and you might see it as the beginning of the end for the attorney-client privilege in internal investigations. While the ultimate implications of the decision remain to be seen, that’s not how we see it.
The attorney-client privilege and the work product doctrine are alive and well, as is their application to internal investigations. The FAR clause implementing the requirement for a Code of Business Ethics and Conduct preserves the contractor’s right to conduct an internal investigation subject to the protections of the attorney-client privilege and the work product doctrine. See FAR 52.203-13. The Justice Department’s Principles of Federal Prosecution of Business Organizations explicitly states that a company is not required to waive privilege in order to get credit for cooperating with a government investigation. “[W]aiving the attorney-client and work product protections has never been a prerequisite under the Department’s prosecution guidelines for a corporation to be viewed as cooperative.”
For federal contractors, publicly-traded companies, and others in highly-regulated industries, the real question presented by Barko is more granular: How can my company avoid the same result?
[UPDATE: On May 26, 2015, the Supreme Court reversed the Fourth Circuit’s decision in Carter and held that the Wartime Suspension of Limitations Act is limited to criminal offenses. Kellogg Brown & Root Services, Inc. v. Carter, No 12-1497 (U.S. May 26, 2015) [pdf]. Our discussion of the Carter decision is available here.]
What is the statute of limitations for qui tam actions brought against a contractor during a time of war? The answer to this question depends not only on whether the Wartime Suspension of Limitations Act applies to actions brought by an individual relator under the qui tam provisions of the False Claims Act, but also on when the United States is “at war.” The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals addressed both of these questions in U.S. ex rel. Carter v. Halliburton Co., 710 F.3d 171 (4th Cir. 2013).
“At war” does not mean “declared war.”
The Wartime Suspension of Limtations Act was enacted in 1942. It suspends the applicable limitations period for any offense involving fraud against the United States when the country is “at war” or when Congress has enacted a specific authorization for the use of the Armed Forces. The suspension lasts for the duration of the war and until five years after hostilities end. 18 U.S.C. § 3287. Hostilities must be terminated “by a Presidential proclamation, with notice to Congress, or by a concurrent resolution of Congress.”
The meaning of “at war” is not specifically outlined in the WSLA, but it is a focal point of the decision in Carter. The relator, a water purification operator at two U.S. military camps in Iraq, asserted that his employer charged the government for work that was not performed. Due to a number of procedural obstacles, the action was filed outside of the six-year limitations period that normally applies to FCA qui tam actions. As a result, the district court dismissed the action as untimely. The relator appealed, asserting that the WSLA tolled the limitations period because the hostilities in Iraq meant that the United States was “at war.” The Fourth Circuit agreed, reasoning that a “formalistic” definition of when the country was “at war” did not reflect the “realities of today.”
Just in time for Thanksgiving, the federal government has withdrawn its False Claim Act suit against KBR alleging $100 million in improper charges for private security costs under KBR’s LOGCAP III contract. We criticized the court’s August 3, 2011 decision denying KBR’s motion to dismiss the case last summer. While KBR has good reason
Contractors sued for False Claims Act violations face a potential judgment assessing stiff civil penalties and treble damages. Even assuming that the government can meet its burden of proving a violation of the False Claims Act, defenses to the damages elements of the case should not be ignored. Grossly disproportionate penalties One important limit on the assessment of civil penalties appears in the 8th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which prohibits the assessment of excessive fines. To prevail on an 8th Amendment defense, a contractor must show that the fine would be grossly disproportionate to the gravity of the offense. Four factors are relevant here:
In one recent case, the court accepted an 8th Amendment argument that wiped out a $50 million civil penalty against a contractor found guilty of bid rigging. See United States ex rel. Bunk v. Birkart Globistics GMBH & Co., No. 1:02cv1168, 1:07cv1198 (E.D. Va. Feb. 14, 2012). The contract involved moving services for military personnel stationed in Europe. The contractor submitted a bid with 51 line item prices. The court found a violation of the False Claims Act because one of the line item prices was affected by a subcontractor bid-rigging scheme. The government sought to assess a $5,500 penalty for each of the contractor’s 9,136 invoices, yielding a penalty of $50,248,000. Despite the False Claims Act violation, the court refused to assess the penalty because it was grossly disproportionate to the gravity of the offense. The entire contract price was only $3.3 million and the contractor’s profit was only $150,000. There was no evidence of economic harm to the government because the contractor’s services were acceptable and the prices were lower than any competitor’s prices.