Federal Funding – False Claims Act

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7^th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: United States of America v. City of Chicago

Case No.: 15-3305

Officials: WOOD, Chief Judge, and POSNER and ROVNER, Circuit Judges.

Focus: Federal Funding – False Claims Act

Appellant fails to properly allege circumstances of purported fraud in False Claim Act action.

“Note that we are not saying that plaintiffs in Hanna’s position must list the City’s promises with any more particularity than that with which the City made them. Unlike the Ninth, Sixth, and Second Circuits, we have never demanded that a plaintiff explain in her complaint why the claim was false. See Cooper v. Pickett, 137 F.3d 616, 625 (9th Cir. 1997); Frank v. Dana Corp., 547 F.3d 564, 570 (6th Cir. 2008); Rombach v. Chang, 355 F.3d 164, 170 (2d Cir. 2004). Although we mentioned in U.S. ex rel. Garst v. Lockheed-Martin Corp. that the district court instructed the plaintiff to state why the claims were fraudulent, our opinion does not hold that it was necessary to do so under Rule 9(b). See 328 F.3d 374, 376 (7th Cir. 2003). Similarly, Gensler v. Strabala, describes the Rule 9(b) standard somewhat informally as “what [the defendant] said and why it is false.” 764 F.3d 735, 737 (7th Cir. 2014). But neither of these cases marked a break with past precedent. Gross is inapposite; it dealt with whether the plaintiff had sufficiently alleged that the defendant’s allegedly false statement was meant to “coax a payment of money from the government.” 415 F.3d at 604. “

Affirmed

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Attorney Derek A. Hawkins is the managing partner at Hawkins Law Offices LLC, where he heads up the firm’s startup law practice. He specializes in business formation, corporate governance, intellectual property protection, private equity and venture capital funding and mergers & acquisitions. Check out the website at www.hawkins-lawoffices.com or contact them at 262-737-8825.