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Disclosure to Public Officials Is Not "Public": Relator to Have Yet Another Day in Court

Client Alert | 1 min read | 02.05.15

The "long and winding road" of U.S. ex rel. Wilson v. Graham County, which has twice taken it to the Supreme Court and back, will continue on remand after the Fourth Circuit reversed the district court's dismissal for want of jurisdiction. Siding with five other circuits in a rebuke of the Seventh Circuit's holding in U.S. v. Bank of Farmington that disclosure to a "competent" public official authorized to act on the information was sufficient to trigger the FCA's public disclosure bar, the Fourth Circuit ruled instead that information shared within the government, even between federal, state, and local agencies, has not reached the public domain, notwithstanding its availability through a public records request.

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Client Alert | 3 min read | 02.13.26

Recent Developments in U.S. Merger Enforcement: HSR Rule Overturned and Leadership Changes at DOJ Antitrust Division

In October 2024, the FTC adopted a final rule that substantially modified the HSR form, requiring new categories of information and documents. The final rule was the most significant overhaul of the HSR premerger notification requirements in decades. The new requirements imposed additional time and expense on merging parties, with the FTC estimating that the new form would likely take triple the amount of time to complete than the previous form. Numerous groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, sued to challenge the rule....