Federal District Court Refuses To Dismiss Case Based on the Public Disclosure Bar When the Government Has Opposed Dismissal On that Basis

In United States ex rel. Karin Berntsen v. Prime Healthcare Services, Inc. et al., the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California denied Prime Healthcare’s motion to dismiss, ruling that a False Claims Act qui tam action cannot be dismissed under the “public disclosure bar” if the Government has opposed dismissal on that basis.

The False Claims Act prevents a private party from bring a qui tam action where the alleged fraud is already publicly known (this is often referred to as the public disclosure bar).  In this case, Karin Berntsen, the relator, alleged that she was the original source of the information underlying her qui tam complaint and that she made these disclosures to the government before filing her lawsuit.  But Prime Healthcare and the other defendants moved to dismiss, in part, because they claimed that Berntsen was not the original source.  In support of their motion, they identified a number of publicly-available reports and articles regarding their allegedly fraudulent practices.

The relator argued that because the Government opposed the dismissal of the complaint on the basis of the public disclosure bar, the district court was barred from dismissing the complaint on that basis.  The court agreed with the relator.  The court also acknowledged a lack of legal authority on the issue and reviewed Congress’s intent in creating the public disclosure bar: to strike a balance between encouraging private persons to root out fraud and stifling parasitic lawsuits.  Since the Government, through its opposition to the dismissal, had indicated that it supported the relator’s qui tam action, the court found that it would be “illogical” for it to conclude that the relator’s action was parasitic, and thus allowed the relator’s qui tam action to proceed.

Tagged: False Claims Act (FCA), Fraud Types, Medicaid Fraud, Medicare Fraud, Whistleblower Laws (Federal)