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A judge recently unsealed portions of the Department of Justice’s criminal discovery manual that provides Department policy for investigating and prosecuting criminal cases. As the DC Circuit explained two years ago, “[i]t contains information and advice for prosecutors about conducting discovery in their cases, including guidance about the government’s various obligations to provide discovery to defendant.” It was developed in large part in response to the horribly flawed prosecution of the late Sen. Ted Stevens – a case in which the judge threw out the conviction because the federal prosecutors hid evidence from the defense team, including contradictory statements by a key witness.   
Continue Reading DOJ’s Blue Book Partially Unsealed

A Memorandum dated January 10, 2018 and authored by Michael Granston, Director of the Commercial Litigation Branch of the Fraud Section of the U.S. Department of Justice, was published on January 24, 2018 (the “Memorandum”). The Memorandum, addressed to DOJ attorneys, describes the factors that government attorneys should consider in deciding whether the government should voluntarily dismiss unmeritorious qui tam suits pursuant to 31 U.S.C. § 3730(c)(2)(A). This policy guidance, which was picked up by the legal press just yesterday, comes after a three-month period in which the DOJ, the relator’s bar, and the defense bar alike have paid more than customary attention to the circumstances under which DOJ might dismiss an unmeritorious qui tam suit.
Continue Reading DOJ Formalizes Guidance for Government Dismissal of Unmeritorious Qui Tam Suits

On December 21, 2017, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) released its annual False Claims Act (FCA) recovery statistics for fiscal year (FY) 2017. The press release measures the DOJ’s total haul at $3.7 billion. Although this is a significant piece of news in its own right, we analyze these statistics each year for any potential trends. (See our post on the 2016 statistics, here, and our full analysis of the 2016 statistics in Robert T. Rhoad’s West Year-In-Review conference brief, available here.) And this year, like the years before it, the trendlines have been far from uninteresting.
Continue Reading DOJ Releases its 2017 False Claims Act Recovery Statistics

An early report from the Health Care Compliance Association’s Health Care Enforcement Compliance Institute states that DOJ will be moving to dismiss False Claims Act cases that it concludes lack merit. DOJ has not yet posted the speech on its website but RACmonitor, an online news and information source for healthcare providers, reports that:

In announcing a significant policy change, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) said that when it concludes that a qui tam case lacks merit, it will file a motion to dismiss the case rather than allowing the relator to continue.

The surprise announcement was made by Michael Granston, director of the commercial litigation branch of the fraud section in the DOJ’s civil division, during the Health Care Compliance Association’s Health Care Enforcement Compliance Institute in Washington, D.C. on Monday.
Continue Reading Change in Policy or Same Old Story? DOJ Suggests it Will Dismiss Unmeritorious Qui Tam Suits

On February 8th, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) quietly issued new guidance on how the agency evaluates corporate compliance programs during fraud investigations. The guidance, published on the agency’s website as the “Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs,” lists 119 “sample questions” that the DOJ’s Fraud Section has frequently found relevant in determining whether to bring charges or negotiate plea and other agreements. The February 8th issuance is the agency’s first formal guidance under the new presidential administration, and the latest effort by the DOJ’s “compliance initiative,” which launched at the hiring of compliance counsel expert Hui Chen in November 2015. The new guidance is particularly valuable for healthcare organizations in light of the agency’s heightened efforts to prosecute Medicare Advantage plans for fraudulent reporting under the False Claims Act.
Continue Reading DOJ Issues New Guidance on the Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs in Federal Fraud Investigations

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has joined a whistleblower lawsuit, United States of America ex rel Benjamin Poehling v. Unitedhealth Group Inc., No. 16-08697 (Cent. Dist. Cal. Sep. 17, 2010), ECF No. 79, against UnitedHealth Group (United) and its subsidiary, UnitedHealthcare Medicare & Retirement—the nation’s largest provider of Medicare Advantage (MA) plans. The suit accuses United of operating an “up-coding” scheme to receive higher payments under MA’s risk adjustment program called the HCC-RAF Program (see below). The complaint alleges that United fraudulently collected “hundreds of millions—and likely billions—of dollars” by claiming patients were sicker than they really were. The suit was originally filed in 2011 by a former United finance director under the False Claims Act (FCA), which allows private citizens to sue those that commit fraud against government programs. Pursuant to the FCA, the case was sealed for five years while the DOJ investigated the claims.
Continue Reading Justice Department Joins Whistleblower Suit Accusing UnitedHealth Group of Overcharging Medicare by “Hundreds of Millions”

We previously reported on a D.C. Circuit case in which a three-judge panel held that when the government is silent, there is no False Claims Act (FCA) liability for a contractor’s “objectively reasonable” interpretation of an ambiguous contract provision. The government is now seeking a rehearing en banc (a rehearing by all of the D.C. Circuit judges) in the hopes of rolling back the panel’s ruling. 
Continue Reading DOJ Seeks Rehearing in D.C. Circuit Case, Hoping to Resurrect Liability for a Contractor’s “Objectively Reasonable” Interpretation of an Ambiguous Contract Provision