Supreme Court Asked to Review Pleading Standard and Constitutionality of FCA
Intermountain Healthcare and Medical Center have filed for a writ of certiorari with the Supreme Court, seeking to overturn the Tenth Circuit’s reversal of Intermountain’s motion to dismiss a qui tam action against it. A district court had concluded that the relator failed to identify specific company employees with knowledge of the alleged fraud, but the Tenth Circuit held that the relator didn’t need to, because only Intermountain had any such information.
The petition raises two questions:
- Can a plaintiff avoid Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 9(b)’s pleading requirements by asserting that only the defendant possesses the information needed to meet those requirements?
- Do the False Claims Act’s qui tam provisions violate the Appointments Clause of Article II of the U.S. Constitution?
Both questions have previously appeared in petitions for writ of certiorari, but neither question has been addressed by the Supreme Court.
