This sort of law is known as a
qui tam statute and was designed to incentivize individual whistleblowers (also known as "informers" or "relators") to privately prosecute public wrongs.
The purpose of this Note is to provide an overview of the arbitrability of
qui tam cases under the FCA.
In each of their extortive lawsuits, including the 'instant'
qui tam action, Kriss, Oberlander and Lerner maintained an untenable tack: suing Bayrock, Kriss's former company, over an alleged financial tax fraud that only Kriss, as CFO and Finance Director at Bayrock, could have committed.
Under the FCA, the government may bring its own action or may intervene in the existing
qui tam complaint, a private right of action brought by a whistleblower (relator) against an individual or company accused of engaging in fraudulent activities against the government.
The impact of these
qui tam actions on tax claims is still developing.
In Agape, the plaintiffs-relators filed a
qui tam action in 2012, alleging that the defendants violated the FCA, the Anti-Kickback Statute and the Health Care Fraud Statute by submitting false claims to Medicare, Medicaid and Tricare for nursing home-related services, hospice-related care and general inpatient services.
Allowing private plaintiffs to leverage the Private Attorney General Act (PAGA) without first laying the factual and legal foundation for their claims and by pursuing discovery demands broader than their allegations violate these principles and would contribute to the growth of opportunistic
qui tam lawsuits under PAGA," states the amicus brief.
36) Due to the difficulty of even detecting such fraudulent activity, Congress included a
qui tam (37) provision in the FCA, designed to encourage private individuals known as "relators"--to come forward with information about potential fraud by bringing claims under the FCA on behalf of the federal government.
When a private person's interest is insufficient to meet the requirements for Article III standing, he may still have standing through the statute under which he brought the action if it is a
qui tam statute.
During the same period, the government paid out $435 million to the whistle-blowers who filed
qui tam complaints.
Even the person or contractor being accused of fraud is not told about the
qui tam case.
The first is the court-centric
qui tam mechanism embodied in the False Claims Act.
