Government's Case Dismissed Due To Inability To Allege False Claims With Particularity

The United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida recently dismissed the government's False Claims Act case against Liberty Ambulance Service, Inc. for failure to plead its claims with sufficient particularity. The court in United States ex rel. Pelletier, No. 3:11-cv-00587 (M.D. Fla. Jan. 7, 2016), held that while the government's allegations plausibly gave rise to relief on its claim that the defendant defrauded the government by falsifying reports of ambulance services provided, the government nonetheless failed to meet the particularity requirement of Rule 9(b).

The crux of the court's decision was that the government failed to sufficiently allege that Liberty had actually submitted a false claim to the government. The court reiterated the often-invoked standard that liability under the FCA attached "not to the underlying fraudulent activity or to the government's wrongful payment but to the "claim for payment.'" Thus, the court stated, "a False Claims Act plaintiff may not describe an improper scheme in detail and assume that a claim for payment must have been or likely was submitted based on the scheme."

The court observed that the government had alleged in detail the fraudulent scheme to falsify records: "the government's complaint and supporting materials go into great detail regarding a scheme whose purpose may well have been to secure payment from the government based on false claims." Yet the government's allegations failed to allege with sufficient particularity that Liberty has actually submitted false claims. Despite presumably having access to the submitted claims, the government could not identify a single false claim submitted by the defendant. Nor were any of the government's witnesses "involved with the actual submission of claims to the government or the receipt of payment from the government." Unable to cite...