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Cert Denied in Closely Watched FCA Penalties Case

Client Alert | less than 1 min read | 10.15.14

On Monday, the Supreme Court denied certiorari in Gosselin World Wide Moving v. U.S. ex rel. Bunk, in which the petitioners questioned to what extent the Eighth Amendment's Excessive Fines Clause serves as a check on per-invoice penalties under the False Claims Act. That denial will preserve the Fourth Circuit's holding that a $24 million fine was sufficiently proportional to the gravity of the offense, despite the relator's failure at trial to seek—let alone prove—any economic harm to the government.


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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].”...