The ability to effectively conduct internal investigations is essential to any business.
From fiscal year 2014 to fiscal year 2018, the number of whistleblower retaliation complaints filed with OSHA has increased by 29 percent. Between 2007 and 2017, retaliation claims filed with the EEOC nearly doubled. In fiscal years 2017 and 2018, the Justice…
In a win for employers, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals recently held that “…the False Claims Act’s anti-retaliation provision unambiguously excludes relief for retaliatory acts occurring after the employee has left employment.” Potts v. Center for Excellence in Higher Education, Inc., No. 17-1143 (10th Cir. Nov. 6, 2018) (emphasis added).
Background
Debbi Potts,…
We are seeing a growing number of False Claims Act (“FCA”), 31 U.S.C. §§ 3729 – 3733 cases where defendants test the sufficiency of relators’ pleadings, which is the heightened pleading standard under Rule 9(b). Rule 9(b) acts as a gatekeeping function by requiring that “in alleging fraud” a “party must state with particularity the…
The Justice Department announced that it secured over $3.5 billion in settlements and judgments from civil cases involving fraud against the government in the fiscal year ending September 30, 2015 (“FY2015”). This is the fourth year in a row that the Justice Department has recovered more than $3.5 billion in cases under the False Claims…
The Fifth Circuit recently affirmed the dismissal of two Relators’ claims brought under the Federal False Claims Act (“FCA”), 31 U.S.C. §§ 3729-3733 based on the Relators’ lack of personal knowledge of the information in their Complaint. In requiring a federal False Claims Act relator to be an original source of the information underlying the…
Continuing a trend we reported in January 2014, the U.S. Department of Justice announced another multi-million dollar settlement of alleged False Claims Act (“FCA”) violations. In this case, Halifax Hospital Medical Center and Halifax Staffing, Inc. (collectively “Halifax”) agreed to pay $85 million to resolve allegations that they violated the False Claims Act by submitting…
