Rule 9(b) Circuit Split
Under Rule 9(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, allegations of fraud or mistake must be pleaded with particularity. The application of the Rule 9(b) pleading standard to claims made under the False Claims Act, however, has generated much litigation, and there remains a split among the federal appeals courts surrounding the specificity of the factual matter which needs to be alleged in order to plead a sufficient False Claims Act complaint. While the First Circuit, the Fifth Circuit, and the Seventh Circuit have ruled that whistleblowers under the False Claims Act are not required to allege specific false claims to satisfy Rule 9(b), the Eleventh Circuit, the Sixth Circuit, the Eighth Circuit, and the Tenth Circuit have all found that plaintiffs must allege specific false claims.
In 2010, the First Circuit decision in U.S. ex rel. Duxbury v. Ortho Biotech Prods., L.P.(2009) and the Eleventh Circuit ruling in U.S. ex rel. Hopper v. Solvay Pharms., Inc.(2009) were both appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court denied certiorari for both cases, however, declining to resolve the divergent appeals court decisions.
Read more about this topic: False Claims Act
Famous quotes containing the words rule, circuit and/or split:
“Man who man would be,
Must rule the empire of himself; in it
Must be supreme, establishing his throne
On vanquished will, quelling the anarchy
Of hopes and fears, being himself alone.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
“We are all hostages, and we are all terrorists. This circuit has replaced that other one of masters and slaves, the dominating and the dominated, the exploiters and the exploited.... It is worse than the one it replaces, but at least it liberates us from liberal nostalgia and the ruses of history.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“Would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split, and when I interrupt the velvety smoothness of my more or less literate syntax with a few sudden words of bar- room vernacular, that is done with the eyes wide open and the mind relaxed but attentive.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)