USA ex rel. Todd Heath v. AT&T, Inc.

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Relator filed a qui tam suit against AT&T and nineteen of its subsidiaries. At issue is whether an earlier and still pending qui tam lawsuit filed against a single AT&T subsidiary bars this suit under the False Claims Act’s first-to-file rule, 31 U.S.C. § 3730(b)(5), which prohibits qui tam actions that rely on the same material fraudulent actions alleged in another pending lawsuit. The court held that the first-to-file bar does not apply because the Wisconsin action alleges fraud based on affirmative pricing misrepresentations by seemingly rogue Wisconsin Bell employees. The present complaint, by contrast, alleges fraud and its concealment arising from a centralized and nationwide corporate policy of failing to enforce known statutory pricing requirements. In the alternative, the complaint does not fail to plead the alleged fraud with sufficient particularity under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 9(b) where the complaint lays out in detail the nature of the fraudulent scheme, the specific governmental program at issue, the specific forms on which misrepresentations were submitted or implicitly conveyed, the particular falsity in the submission’s content, its materiality, the means by which the company concealed the fraud, and the timeframe in which the false submissions occurred. Accordingly, the court reversed the district court's judgment and remanded for further proceedings. View "USA ex rel. Todd Heath v. AT&T, Inc." on Justia Law