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Court of International Trade Takes Jurisdiction Over Civil FCA Case

Client Alert | less than 1 min read | 08.04.05

Distinguishing its own precedent holding that it has no jurisdiction over civil FCA lawsuits brought by qui tam relators, the U.S. Court of International Trade (USCIT) recently held in U.S. v. Universal Fruits and Vegetables Corp., 2005 WL 1592953 (July 6, 2005), that it does have exclusive jurisdiction over non-qui-tam civil FCA actions brought by the government to recover unpaid customs duties. In this case involving government allegations that defendants avoided paying customs duties by making false statements to Customs officials, the USCIT confirmed a previous ruling of the Ninth Circuit that had transferred the matter to the USCIT for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.

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Client Alert | 4 min read | 10.30.26

Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Right: GAO Sustains Protest Where Agency Tried to Fix PIA Violation with a Second PIA Violation

Recent sustain decisions by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) in Fluor Federal Solutions, LLC and Reliance Test & Technology send a clear message: when an agency tries to fix a Procurement Integrity Act (PIA) violation by committing a second one, the cure can be just as fatal as the disease. The cases involved the U.S. Air Force’s $1.8 billion procurement for O&M services at Elgin Air Force Base. During discussions, the Air Force inadvertently released a pricing overview slide with all offerors’ bottom-line evaluated costs to Reliance Test & Technology, which immediately notified the agency of the error. In response, the Air Force decided to level the playing field by providing the same information to all the other offerors in the procurement, stating, “[o]fferors may consider this disclosure in their [final proposal revision].”...