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The False Claims Act's Seal Provisions Upheld

Client Alert | 1 min read | 04.04.11

The False Claims Act contains seal provisions that require every qui tam complaint to be filed under seal for a 60-day period, which is often extended many times over, to give the Department of Justice an opportunity to investigate the allegations and intervene, if it chooses. In ACLU v. Holder (Mar. 28, 2011, http://pacer.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinion.pdf/092086.P.pdf), the Fourth Circuit, in a 2-1 decision, rejected arguments that these provisions violate the public’s First Amendment right of access to judicial proceedings or infringe the authority of federal courts to decide whether a particular complaint should be unsealed in violation of the Constitution’s separation of powers clause, noting that the seal provisions are narrowly tailored because, inter alia, relators are precluded only from publicly discussing the filing of the suit and not from disclosing the existence of the fraud.

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Client Alert | 10 min read | 04.22.26

The EU Industrial Accelerator Act Proposal’s Significance for the Automotive Industry

On March 4, 2026, the European Commission proposed the Industrial Accelerator Act (IAA), a draft regulation that aims to reverse the decline of the EU’s manufacturing sector while supporting the adoption of cleaner technologies. This client alert is the third in a three-part series dedicated to the IAA. In our first alert, we provided an overview of the draft regulation. In a second alert, we took a closer look at the new foreign direct investment (FDI) review framework that the IAA would establish for certain strategic sectors. In this third and final instalment of the series, we focus on the implications of the proposal for the automotive industry....