5 Takeaways As DOJ Finds Footing In FCA Dismissal Crusade

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Publish Date:
November 15, 2019
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Law360
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Summary

The U.S. Department of Justice’s controversial crusade against disfavored False Claims Act suits appears to be on increasingly solid ground after a series of court decisions allowing the DOJ to end whistleblower FCA cases. Here, Law360 spotlights five key takeaways from the government’s recent success.

The trend of triumphs for the DOJ was hammered home by three decisions on the same day earlier this month. The decisions on Nov. 5 by federal judges in California, Pennsylvania and Washington state granted DOJ motions to dismiss fraud allegations targeting AstraZeneca PLC, Gilead Sciences Inc. and a UnitedHealth Group Inc. unit despite opposition from FCA whistleblowers.

In addition, the effort to end 36 cases in less than two years is remarkably aggressive by historical standards. In a 2013 study, Stanford Law School professor David Freeman Engstrom found that the government had unilaterally tossed just 30 of 4,000 unsealed FCA complaints filed by whistleblowers dating to 1986, when the FCA was modernized.

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