On May 13, 2019, in a unanimous decision, the United States Supreme Court held that even in cases where the government does not intervene in a False Claims Act (FCA) action, a relator is entitled to rely on the portion of the statute that allows the filing of an FCA action within three years of when relevant material facts are known or should have been known by “the official of the United States charged with responsibility to act in the circumstances.” A relator’s ability to rely on this portion of the statute, whether or not the government intervenes in the case, increases the time by which a relator can file an FCA action by up to four years in some cases. A copy of the Supreme Court opinion in the case, entitled Cochise Consultancy, Inc. v. United States ex rel. Hunt, can be found here.

Under the FCA statutory structure, FCA actions must be filed within six years of the alleged violation or three years after relevant material facts are known or should have been known by the government, whichever is later. A hard 10-year limit since the time of the alleged violation also applies to all claims. There was previously a question as to whether, in nonintervened cases, the relator could rely on the “government knowledge” portion of this statute for determining whether the action was timely. Writing for the unanimous court, Justice Thomas conclusively answered this question by holding:

The limitations period in §3731(b)(2) applies in a relator-initiated suit in which the government has declined to intervene. Both government-initiated suits under §3730(a) and relator-initiated suits under §3730(b) are “civil action[s] under section 3730.”  Thus, the plain text of the statute makes the two limitations periods applicable in both types of suits. 

The Court further reasoned that “treating a relator-initiated, nonintervened suit as a ‘civil action under section 3730’ for purposes of subsection (b)(1) but not subsection (b)(2) is at odds with fundamental rules of statutory interpretation.” The Court found “nothing unusual about extending the limitations period when the government official did not know and should not reasonably have known the relevant facts, given that the government is the party harmed by the false claim and will receive the bulk of any recovery.” Moreover, since the relator is not an “official of the United States” for purposes of the FCA, their knowledge of alleged false claims does not itself trigger the three-year statute of limitations.

Thus, relators can now take advantage of the full ten-year statutory period where the evidence shows that the government’s knowledge of the facts occurred within three years of the filing of the action – even if the alleged violation giving rise to the action occurred more than six-years before filing and even if the relator was aware of the alleged violation giving rise to the action more than three years before filing.