SubscribeWe reported back in March on the US District Court for the District of Columbia’s summary judgment decision in the Lance Armstrong/Floyd Landis/US Postal Service (USPS) False Claims Act (FCA) litigation, centered on Lance Armstrong’s use of performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) while he was leading a professional cycling team sponsored by the USPS. A pack of motions in limine (MILs) filed by the parties over the past few weeks suggest that the case may well be headed to trial this fall, and raise some notable legal issues to watch as it continues to unfold, including: (more…)
actual damages
In Calculating FCA Damages, Another Court Rejects Government Windfalls Based on Purportedly “Tainted Claims”
Last month, the US District Court for the District of Columbia delivered another blow to the “tainted claims” theory of False Claims Act (FCA) damages frequently espoused by the government and qui tam relators.
From the 1990s through 2004, the US Postal Service sponsored a professional cycling team led by Lance Armstrong, who won the Tour de France seven consecutive times during that span shortly after surviving metastatic cancer. It was later revealed that Armstrong and his teammates had used performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) during the relevant time period. Armstrong ultimately was stripped of his titles and banned from the sport permanently. After years of denials, Armstrong publicly admitted his PED use in a 2013 interview with Oprah Winfrey.
In 2010, former Armstrong teammate Floyd Landis filed a qui tam FCA suit under seal against Armstrong, the team’s owner (Tailwind Sports Corporation) and others. United States ex rel. Landis v. Tailwind Sports Corp., et al., No. 1:10-cv-00976 (CRC) (U.S. Dist. Ct. D.D.C.). The government intervened against certain defendants, including Armstrong, shortly after the 2013 interview aired. The government and Landis seek to recover as damages the entire $32 million the Postal Service paid to Tailwind during the last four years of the sponsorship, trebled to nearly $100 million, on the grounds that the defendants sought payment while actively concealing Armstrong’s and his teammates’ PED use, which violated both the rules of the sport and the Postal Service’s sponsorship agreement—thereby violating the FCA. (more…)
Determining FCA Damages: Sixth Circuit Urges Comparable Sales Analysis to Assess Fair Market Value, Even Where Number of Market Participants is Small
On April 6, 2015, the Sixth Circuit reversed a $657 million judgment previously labeled by the Justice Department as “the largest judgment in the history of the False Claims Act,” because the government failed to prove damages. For the second time in U.S. v. United Technologies Corp., the Sixth Circuit remanded to the district court to determine if the government can prove that false statements made in a 1983 supply bid by Pratt & Whitney, now owned by United Technologies Corp., in resulted in actual damages to the government. Significantly, the Sixth Circuit opined that comparable sales analysis is the preferred method of determining the fair market value of goods to determine if the government suffered damage, even in a market that appears to be an oligopoly.
The government filed the case in 1999, claiming that Pratt had made false statements to the Air Force while competing with GE Aircraft to supply engines for fighter jets. Pratt had served for years as the exclusive supplier of engines for the fighter jets, when, in 1982, the Air Force decided to switch to competitive bidding. This switch led to “the Great Engine War” as Pratt and GE Aircraft tried to undercut the other to sell more engines to the Air Force. The government alleged that in its 1983 multi-year supply bid, Pratt misstated its projected costs to supply the engines to coax the Air Force to choose Pratt over GE Aircraft. However, this didn’t work: the Air Force purchased most of its aircraft in 1983 from GE, and in each subsequent year, the Air Force called for the companies to improve their prior “best and final” offers. The resulting lower offers allowed the Air Force to purchase more engines from the supplier who could generate that year’s best offer.
Pratt was held liable for violating the False Claims Act for the statements regarding projected costs in its 1983 bid, but the lower court initially found no actual damages, resulting in an award of $7 million in statutory penalties only. In the first appeal in 2010, the Sixth Circuit vacated the district court’s damages holding. On remand, the district court awarded $657 million in damages. In its April 6, 2015 opinion, the Sixth Circuit again reversed, holding that its earlier remand had not mandated that the lower court find the government suffered actual damages, but simply required a second look at calculation issues.
The Sixth Circuit noted that the government bears the burden of proving its actual damages. The Sixth Circuit rejected the government’s argument that in evaluating what the government should have paid for the engines, a presumption should apply that a dollar of overstated projected costs in the supply bid translates to a dollar of actual damages. Rather, to determine whether the government paid more than it should have, the Sixth Circuit stressed that the analysis should focus on the fair market value of the supplied engines:
When the government gets what it paid for despite a contractor’s misstatements, it [...]
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