In This Issue:

- Promoting the False Claims Act By Dismissing Meritless Qui Tam Actions

-Delaware Supreme Court Extends Shareholder Books and Records Inspection Rights to Privileged Internal Investigation Documents

- Stopping the DOJ at the Border? A New Defense to the Reach of Federal Extraterritorial Criminal Action

- California's Automatic Renewal Statute Creates Risk of Class Action Litigation

- New Jersey Supreme Court Recognizes Broad Common Interest Privilege

- Excerpt from Promoting the False Claims Act By Dismissing Meritless Qui Tam Actions:

The False Claims Act's qui tam action is a distinctive and atypical form of litigation. Through the qui tam mechanism, Congress created a unique way for the United States to recover for false claims by empowering private persons— relators—to file suit "for the person and for the United States Government." 31 U.S.C. § 3730(b). While allowing private persons to file suit on behalf of the government, Congress ensured through a variety of means that the government would retain substantial control over cases brought in its name. In addition to the government's powers to intervene and take over the prosecution of a qui tam action, to settle such an action, and to limit or even halt discovery that would interfere with a government investigation, the government also has the power to unilaterally "dismiss [a qui tam] action notwithstanding the objections" of a relator. Id. § 3730(c)(2)(A). Yet the most striking thing about the government's dismissal power is how rarely the government exercises it—only a handful of times since the 1986 amendments to the False Claims Act created the modern qui tam action.