Massachusetts High Court Adopts Broad Reading of Commonwealth’s Public Disclosure Bar
In a May 2021 decision, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court affirmed the dismissal of a Massachusetts False Claims Act suit on the grounds that it was barred by the MFCA’s public disclosure bar. The suit brought by relator Johan Rosenberg alleged that Defendant banks conspired to engage in fraud in connection with resetting interest rates for certain municipal bonds known as “variable rate debt obligations” or VRDOs. Specifically, Rosenberg alleged that the defendants inflated interest rates by falsely representing to municipal issuers in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts that they would actively and individually reset VRDO rates, but instead mechanically reset rates without considering the individual characteristics of the VRDOs.
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