San Francisco Injury Lawyer Blog
Our team is proud to partner with whistleblowers to fight back against health care fraud and other forms of government contracts fraud. When a case involves fraud on the federal government, the False Claims Act is the primary tool that private citizens can use to pursue these claims. While we often talk about specific issues of fraud on this blog, it is also important to periodically take a step back and examine this important piece of legislation more generally. In this post, our False Claims Act lawyer does just that.
An Overview and the History of the False Claims Act
The False Claims Act (“FCA” or “the Act”) is a series of statutes, with two of the most important pieces found at 31 U.S.C. 3729, which defines a false claim, and 31 U.S.C. 3730, which creates a cause of action. Passed during the Civil War Era amid concerns about contractors defrauding the Union Army, the FCA was largely forgotten until the mid-1980s and has gone through several major revisions in the past few decades. Now, it stands as the primary tool for fighting a range of frauds from a manufacturer providing inferior goods pursuant to a military contract to a medical provider billing Medicare for services that were not medically necessary to any other form of government contract fraud.