U.S. Supreme Court False Claims Act case

Congress passed the False Claims Act in 1863 in response to rampant fraud and other misdoings principally to do with the sale of war material & supplies during the Civil War. Codified ten years later in 1873, and then amended in 1943, 1982, significantly in 1986, and then again finally in 1994; the original provisions have come to be known more today in connection with so-called “whistleblower” cases than guns & bullets.

An article, though, in the Cincinnati Enquirer, Tuesday, told of a local case that’s making it to the U.S. Supreme Court later this month --- and, according to the article, it’s only the sixth time in 145 years that that’s happened.

The case is Allison Engine Company v. U.S. (07-214), and the question to be before the Court is one of whether a false claim allegation has to be shown as having been submitted to the federal government, or whether it is sufficient to establish that the claim was paid for using federal funds.? The issue has produced a conflict among the federal appeal courts.

There have been any number of cases in the past few years to perhaps illustrate the case, but the Enquirer article mentions Allison’s Sixth Circuit opinion in 2006, and U.S .ex rel. Totten v. Bombardier Corp. in 2004. Totten held that claims had to be presented to an officer or employee of the Government before any liability attaches.

The Sixth Circuit held that the district court had erred in requiring a showing that a false claim had actually been presented the Government, stating that a number of courts had followed the Supreme Court’s lead in avoiding “an overly narrow construction of the FCA, citing its own U.S. ex rel A+Homecare, Inc. v. Medshares from 2005.


While the Supreme Court’s deliberating the Allison case, the Senate will possibly be giving further consideration to amendments to the False Claims Act introduced last September 12th. and referred to the Judiciary Committee.

[ Current FCA wording ]