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Qui Tam

Virginia Qui Tam Law

Dedicated to qui tam practice in Virginia under the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act and the Federal False Claims Act.
By Zachary A. Kitts

Post Frequency: 0.8/day

Last Entry: July 06, 2010 at 16:56:00

A look at the standing of qui tam relators under the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act

Posted on June 14, 2008
In the course of blogging, from time to time people call or email me about various aspects of the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act as well as the Federal False Claims Act. When I do receive such questions, along with the permission of the person asking the question, I sometimes use such topics for a post...

Proof that one Medicare provider with a laptop can steal more than ten men with guns

Posted on June 13, 2008
In Mario Puzo's novel The Godfather, Don Corleone says something along the lines of, "One lawyer with his brief case can steal more than ten men with guns." Today the Washington Post has an excellent front page story by Carrie Johnson proving that one crooked Medicare provider with a laptop can steal even more than that--to be specific, one single South Florida Medicare/Medicaid provider bilked the United States out of $105 million...

Breaking News: U.S. Supreme Court announces its decision in Allison Engine case

Posted on June 09, 2008
The Supreme Court today announced its opinion in Allison Engine Co., Inc., et al. v. United States ex rel Sanders, et al. Case No. 07-214. To read the opinion, click here. As a recap, Allison Engine is important because it resolves a Circuit split on the issue of presentment--i...

Recovering Mandatory Attorney's Fees under the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act

Posted on June 07, 2008
The topic of today's post is the recovery of mandatory attorney's fees under the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act in Virginia state court. I find it interesting how many attorneys simply do not pay attention to maximizing the fee recovery under fee shifting statutes generally, although federal court practitioners tend to be a little more experienced in this area...

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Its Official--John Brownlee for Attorney General in 2009

Posted on June 07, 2008
Several previous entries have discussed Mr. Brownlee's campaign for Virginia Attorney General, but it is now official. To visit his official campaign website, click here. No word yet on an official "John Brownlee for Attorney General" blog; it is probably too early for the official blog at this point, with a little less than a year to go until the primary and roughly 16 months until the General Election...

National City Mortgage to Pay $4.6 Million to Settle False Claims Allegations Involving Federally Insured Mortgages

Posted on May 23, 2008
National City Mortgage to Pay $4.6 Million to Settle False Claims Allegations Involving Federally Insured Mortgages WASHINGTON, May 22 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- National City MortgageInc. has agreed to pay the United States $4.6 million to settle allegationsarising under the False Claims Act concerning 58 federally insured loansfor mortgages submitted to the Department of Housing and Urban Development(HUD), the Justice Department announced today...

Trouble on the Horizon: Fourth Circuit Affirms Judge Lee's Dismissal of FCA case in United States ex rel. Godfrey v. KBR, Holds that Wrongful Terminations Claims under the FCA are Subject to Arbitration Clauses in Employment Contracts.

Posted on May 23, 2008
On Friday, May 17th, the Fourth Circuit affirmed the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia's dismissal of FCA claims brought by two relators against their former employers -- Kellogg, Brown & Root Services, Inc...

Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act case filings: The first "Notice of Declination" ever filed under the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act

Posted on May 23, 2008
This will mark the third blog post in our occasional series dealing with filings under the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act from across the Commonwealth. In previous posts, I shared the first complaint filed under the VFATA, along with the first "Notice of Intervention" ever filed by the Office of the Attorney General in Commonwealth of Virginia ex rel...

Breaking News: John Brownlee Announces Press Conference for May 20, 2008 to Announce Plans to Run for Virginia Attorney General

Posted on May 19, 2008
Roanoke-area station WDBJ-7 has just announced that former federal prosecutor John Brownlee has scheduled a press conference for tomorrow, May 20, 2008 at 11:00 AM.Brownlee, whose last day as U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Virginia was Friday, is expected to announce his candidacy for Virginia Attorney General in the upcoming 2009 election...

Virginia Medicaid Fraud Control Unit Recieves National Award; more than $650 million dollars recovered in FY 2007.

Posted on May 13, 2008
Yesterday, the Virginia Office of the Attorney General's Medicaid Fraud Control Unit (MFCU) received the "Office of the Inspector General's State Fraud Award." To view the press release, click here. On a related note, the Virginia Office of the Attorney General announced recently its plans to continue cutting its reliance on General Fund revenues...

And Then There Were Two: Paul Harris Decides Not to Run for Attorney General of Virginia in 2009

Posted on May 10, 2008
This recent post from Charlottesville, Virginia's Daily Progress announces Paul Harris' decision not to run for Virginia Attorney General in 2009, clearing the way for a clean, straightforward contest between soon-to-be-former U.S. Attorney John Brownlee and Fairfax Sen...

Rebuttal to D.C. Examiner's so-called "Editorial" of May 6, 2008

Posted on May 07, 2008
While I am as big a fan of the D.C. Examiner as anyone--and I especially enjoy the work of William Flook, one of their staff writers--I cannot let the blather that was passed off as an editorial yesterday stand without comment. Of course, I realize that editorials are specifically intended to take controversial positions on pressing issues of the day...

DRAFT VIRGINIA QUI TAM HERO JOHN BROWNLEE FOR ATTORNEY GENERAL OF VIRGINIA!!!

Posted on April 26, 2008
Okay, maybe the headline is a little premature. Still, the single most exciting development in the 2009 Virginia Attorney General race since my Open Letter has been John Brownlee's resignation from his position as United States Attorney for the Western District of Virginia...

Assessment of penalties against parties liable under the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act and Federal False Claims Act

Posted on April 26, 2008
It is well known that the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act--like its counterpart the Federal False Claims Act--provides for treble damages against anyone submitting false claims to a government entity for payment. Both the VFATA and the Federal False Claims Act also create civil penalties for each violation of the law--that is, for each false claim submitted for payment...

The Utility of Private Law Enforcement: Academic Support from the University of Chicago

Posted on April 22, 2008
An article published by two professors at the University of Chicago should be of some interest to readers of this blog. See, Blowing the Whistle: Which External Controls Best Reveal Corporate Fraud? The link is to a newsletter distributed by the University of Chicago and not to the paper itself...

A Breif History of Qui Tam Litigation Under the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act

Posted on April 21, 2008
One of my stated purposes in starting this blog was to create interest in the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act and in qui tam practice in general. In order for statutes such as the Federal False Claims Act and the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act to achieve their goals, it is necessary to build a public-private partnership between qui tam attorneys in private practice and our counterparts in the Virginia Office of the Attorney General and the United States Department of Justice...

Blog Review and Comments: Lean and Mean Litigation Blog

Posted on April 19, 2008
I recommend everyone interested in this blog check out Stewart Weltman's Lean and Mean Litigation blog. While it does not address qui tam or false claims practice in particular, its focus on efficient litigation practices is invaluable to those interested in qui tam practice...

False Claims Corrections Act of 2007 sent to the full Senate

Posted on April 18, 2008
Senate Bill 2041, also known as the False Claims Act Corrections Act of 2007, has received overwhelming bipartisan support from the Senate Judiciary Committee, which has reported it out to the full Senate for consideration. "This is common sense legislation that we expect to sail through the House and Senate," said Jeb White, President of Taxpayers Against Fraud...

An Open Letter to Bob McDonnell and Ken Cuccinelli (as well as all other Potential 2009 Candidates for Attorney General of Virginia)

Posted on April 15, 2008
Now that Senator Cuccinelli (R-Fairfax) has announced his intentions to run for Attorney General of the Commonwealth next year, I figured the time was right for this open letter. Sen. Cuccinelli has a sterling opportunity before him to embrace the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act and make it part of his campaign...

Qui Tam Practice in Virginia: Filing Under Seal in Virginia Circuit Courts

Posted on March 22, 2008
One issue specific to qui tam practice in Virginia state courts is the structure of the Circuit Courts and the implications of that structure for filing the complaint under seal. Unlike in states such as Maryland, Virginia has no uniform case management system in use in every Circuit Court...

The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 and the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act: One Year Anniversary

Posted on March 21, 2008
March 13, 2008 marked the one year anniversary of the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act's certification under the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005. In a nutshell, the Commonwealth now gets an extra 10% of all monies received in false claims cases brought under the Virginia statute...

Qui Tam Practice Example: Documentation of a Qui Tam Claim is not to be taken lightly by potential relators

Posted on March 15, 2008
One does not have to in employment law or qui tam practice very long before being confronted with a situation along the following lines: An employee comes to the lawyer for representation in a whistleblower situation. The employee provides the attorney with documents from the employer that the employee considers to be confidential...

LexisNexis and the National Institute for Trial Advocacy (NITA) to publish new practice commentaries on the Federal False Claims Act

Posted on March 08, 2008
LexisNexis will soon be publishing updated Practice Commentaries for the Federal False Claims Act (31 U.S.C.S 3729 et seq). The Practice Commentaries are published as part of a joint project with the National Institute for Trial Advocacy(NITA), and are designed to assist practitioners without prior experience in technical areas of practice...

Virginia Achieves A-minus Rating for Good Government

Posted on March 06, 2008
The Pew Center on the States announced this week that Virginia received an A-rating overall for the performance of our state government. See, http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/ Virginia is one of only three states to receive an A- rating, with the other two being Utah and Washington...

Qui Tam Resource Tip: the Project on Government Oversight

Posted on February 29, 2008
The Project on Government Oversight http://www.pogo.org maintains an excellent on-line database at http://www.contractormisconduct.org which lists companies responsible for misconduct on federal contracts. Some might find it incredible that the feds do not maintain a centralized federal database of contractor misconduct; the POGO database is an effort to meet the definite need for centralized, publicly available information on how hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money is spent...

Practice Examples: Fairfax County Budget Woes and the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act

Posted on February 27, 2008
Fairfax County is now proposing to use millions of dollars in "new money" (i.e., money raised with the power granted to Northern Virginia localities last year to increase certain taxes and fees to pay for back-logged road construction and maintenance) to pay for old problems...

The Blog of Legal Times on argument in Allison Engine Company v. United States ex rel Thacker

Posted on February 27, 2008
The Blog of the Legal Times has an excellent post on today's arguments before the United States Supreme Court in the pivotal case of Allison Engine Company v. United States ex rel Thacker. The article can be found at: http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/895477/26549968 Why is Allison Engine a pivotal case? A fundamental element of a false claims case is the "call on the public fisc...

Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act Case Filings: Commonwealth of Virginia ex rel Virginia Turf Management Associates v. Mary Susan Resolute, et. al. Case No. 2003-998

Posted on February 25, 2008
Today is the first entry in our occasional series "Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act Filings," in which we will post and discuss unsealed VFATA filings from across the Commonwealth. The VFATA was passed in 2002 and became law on January 1, 2003...

Fairfax County Supervisor Pat Herrity pushes for transparency in county spending

Posted on February 18, 2008
The Examiner reported in its weekend edition that newly elected Fairfax County Supervisor Pat Herrity is pushing for greater transparency in county spending. His proposal would create a county equivalent to sites such as www.usaspending.gov, which allow citizens to research and track information on federal spending...

Maryland False Claims Act Update

Posted on February 15, 2008
Maryland appears to be making progress on passing its own false claims act. Senate Bill 0845--which is cross-filed with House Bill 292--had its first reading this week. Fortunately, the current version of the legislation is a true false claims act, in that it creates liability for any false call on the public fisc...

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