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§ 881

Citation
§ 881
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

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        The dissent points to four cases from other circuits
that, according to the dissent, “reject[] civil FCA liability
where defendant contractors arguably submitted ‘false’
certifications, but were engaged in cooperative or supervised
undertakings with the government that rendered the certifications
irrelevant to the ongoing payment decisions.” See infra n.8 and
accompanying text. Of these four cases, only United States ex
rel. Lamers v. City of Green Bay, 168 F.3d 1013 (7th Cir. 1999),
involves a certification of statutory or regulatory compliance
akin to the certification requirement at issue in the instant
case. Lamers was a qui tam case where the Seventh Circuit
considered a private relator’s claim that the City of Green Bay
had, on numerous occasions, falsely certified (and falsely
represented in informal correspondence) that its transit system
complied with federal regulations. While the court’s rejection
of the relator’s FCA claim was based largely on its determination
that it was unclear whether the city’s certifications were
actually false, the court also took note of the evidence that the
City was cooperating with federal authorities in an attempt to
bring their transit system into full compliance with federal
regulations and reasoned that FCA liability would be
inappropriate under these circumstances. See id. at 1019-20.
     Initially, we note that it is unclear from Lamers whether
the Seventh Circuit refused to impose liability because the
government’s knowledge undermined the falsity of the claim or
because the Seventh Circuit accepted that government knowledge
was a viable defense to FCA liability under the circumstances of
that case. Moreover, as discussed infra at Part IV, the
rationale provided by the Seventh Circuit for its refusal to
impose FCA liability in Lamers is specific to qui tam cases and
is far less compelling in the context of an FCA claim brought by
the government. Accordingly, we are not persuaded that the
reasoning of Lamers obligates us to depart from Thompson’s clear
holding that “false certifications of compliance create liability
under the FCA when certification is a prerequisite to obtaining a
government benefit.” Thompson, 125 F.3d at 902 (adopting the
reasoning of Anton, 91 F.3d at 1266).