False Claims Act Insights - If Everything Matters, Nothing Does: Parsing Materiality in FCA Disputes
Podcast: Non-binding Guidance: SEC Disclosure Issues for Life Sciences Companies
Life Sciences Quarterly (Q3 2019): SEC Enforcement and Class Actions Regarding FDA Communications
Below are noteworthy False Claims Act (FCA) decisions from the third quarter of 2023. The main issues in the cases are: Materiality. The Fourth Circuit held that a pharmacist’s efforts to falsify patient eligibility...more
On June 1, 2023, the Supreme Court decided a pair of closely watched False Claims Act (FCA) cases, U.S. ex rel. Schutte v. SuperValu Inc., No. 21-1326, and U.S. ex rel. Proctor v. Safeway, Inc., No. 22-111....more
Walmart successfully ended eight years of protracted litigation under the False Claims Act (“FCA”) on June 4, 2021, when the Sixth Circuit affirmed dismissal of Medicare and Medicaid fraud allegations against the major...more
This year saw substantial activity in FCA settlements and litigated court cases. Although no single case or development dominated the discourse this year, several important court decisions were issued, including two that may...more
The Situation: A jury had originally handed down a large verdict in a False Claims Act ("FCA") case that resulted in $347 million judgment. The district court threw out that verdict, however, and the relators appealed. The...more
Editors’ Note: This is the fourth in our start-of-year series examining important trends in white collar law and investigations in the coming year. Our previous entry discussed anti-corruption trends in 2020. Up next: a look...more
Unless and until the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, “en banc, interprets Escobar differently,” a Ninth Circuit panel, relying on past case law, has ruled that relators seeking to establish False Claims Act...more
Following our inaugural installment of the Health Care Enforcement Quarterly Roundup, we are pleased to be back this quarter with another overview of key enforcement trends in the health care industry. In this issue, we...more
Summer is almost here. For some, that means planning vacations to the beach, hitting the gym to shed that winter weight, or perhaps hitting the golf course—but for us at the Sheppard Mullin Healthcare Law Blog and the False...more
Last month, a U.S. District Court in the Middle District of Florida overturned judgments totaling $347,864,285 returned by a jury under the federal False Claims Act (FCA) and Florida’s state equivalent against the owners and...more
The ruling in Universal Health Services, Inc. v. Escobar "rejects a system of government traps, zaps, and zingers that permits the government to retain the benefit of a substantially conforming good or service but to recover...more
If the government does not take action and continues to pay for Medicare/Medicaid claims after it learns of non-compliance related to the claims, is the non-compliance material to the government’s decision to pay? This is a...more
The United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida vacated a large jury verdict in a False Claims Act case against the owners and operators of nursing homes because the evidence did not satisfy the...more
The False Claims Act (FCA), initially enacted in 1863 during the Civil War, was sponsored by the Lincoln administration to curtail the rampant fraud and excessive profiteering being perpetuated by government contractors, who,...more
It has been one year since the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Universal Health Services v. United States ex rel. Escobar, which resolved a circuit split as to the validity of the implied false certification theory...more
A court in the Southern District of New York (“SDNY” or the “Court”) recently released an important decision applying the Supreme Court’s landmark Escobar ruling to a qui tam action involving percentage fee arrangements for...more
Last year, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court decided Universal Health Services, Inc. v. United States ex rel. Escobar (Escobar), 136 S.Ct. 1989 (2016), creating important implications for Federal False Claims Act (FCA) cases...more
The Supreme Court’s decision in Universal Health Services v. Escobar ex rel. United States sought to clarify the standard for materiality under the False Claims Act, but lower courts have already begun to adopt different...more
Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court’s important opinion in Universal Health Services, Inc. v. U.S. ex rel. Escobar, 136 S. Ct. 1989 (2016), dealt with the issue of whether a so-called “implied certification” that a...more
On November 22, 2016, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit issued two False Claims Act (FCA) opinions in the continuing debate over the parameters of the FCA. In United States ex. rel. Escobar et al. v....more
In June, the Supreme Court issued Universal Health Services, Inc. v. U.S. ex rel. Escobar, a landmark opinion in which the Supreme Court addressed the standard for pleading materiality in FCA implied certification cases. The...more
This summer, the Northern District of California issued an opinion in an intervened case that expanded the theory of express false certification to a startling degree. Ruling on a motion to dismiss, the court in U.S. ex rel....more
On Tuesday, October 25, 2016, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit heard argument in United States ex rel. Escobar, et al. v. Universal Health Services, Inc. This case was sent back...more
The Supreme Court decided Universal Health Services v. U.S. ex rel. Escobar on June 16, 2016 in which it ruled the implied false certification theory, previously recognized in several circuits, can form the basis for False...more
The Vulnerability of Healthcare Information - According to a report the Brookings Institute issued in May 2016, 23% of all data breaches occur in the healthcare industry. Nearly 90% of healthcare organizations had some...more