DRAFT FOR ATTORNEY REVIEW — NOT FINAL

Section 1

Citation
Section 1
Parent Document
United States v. Southland Management Corp., 326 F.3d 669 (2002)
Effective Date
2002-05-22
Original Source
https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/27565/united-states-v-southland-managem... ↗

Other Sections in This Document (1123)

Full Text

1,084 chars 
Further relevant to whether the owners knowingly presented false claims are the facts that HUD never informed the owners that their project was not decent, safe and sanitary and never invoked the contractual remedies for noncompliance with that standard. No regulatory or contractual definition of that standard exists. The content of the standard is far from self-evident. HUD, for its part, did not even place the project on its list of troubled properties until nine months after the period for which FCA damages are now sought. At oral argument to the en banc court, the government’s attorney repeatedly failed to offer any coherent, non-tautological definition of the standard. Where there are legitimate grounds for disagreement over the scope of a contractual or regulatory provision, and the claimant’s actions are in good faith, the claimant cannot be said to have knowingly presented a false claim. Lamers, 168 F.3d at 1018 (“imprecise statements or differences in interpretation growing out of a disputed legal question are ... not false under the FCA”) (citation omitted).