As 2015 comes to an end, we look back and see many of the themes that have become familiar to False Claims Act practitioners and followers: The U.S. Department of Justice announced recoveries in the billions; health care, government contracts, and financial services companies continued to be FCA favorite targets; barriers to bringing and prosecuting FCA cases seemed to shrink a little bit more; the DOJ's arsenal for proving FCA liability seemed to grow and may now even include statistical sampling; and the DOJ once more threatened individual liability would come to the forefront.
But there were also new developments that suggest 2016 will be a busy year for FCA watchers: The U.S. Supreme Court was unusually active and will be again in 2016 when it takes up the implied certification theory; although 2015 saw a decrease in total fines and the number of cases filed over 2014, the DOJ continued to recover billions of dollars in FCA fines, demonstrating that the FCA remains a thriving source of litigation risk; courts increasingly seemed to recognize how hard it is to make sense of the regulatory web that trips up many companies in the FCA context; and at least one company found a way to avoid being put out of business by an FCA verdict. Here is a quick look at what the FCA brought us in 2015. Please see our full article as published by Law360.
Because of the generality of this update, the information provided herein may not be applicable in all situations and should not be acted upon without specific legal advice based on particular situations.
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