Plaintiffs Seek Supreme Court Review in Federal Circuit Tucker Act Case
Client Alert | 1 min read | 02.12.19
On February 4, several health plans (including C&M client Maine Community Health Options) filed petitions for certiorari at the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking review of the Federal Circuit’s opinion in the ACA “risk corridors” cases, which held that while the risk corridors program contained a mandatory payment obligation on the part of the Government, that payment obligation was temporarily suspended by appropriations riders that restricted HHS funds available to satisfy the obligation, even though the riders did not amend or repeal the statutory payment obligation and even though the health plans had already performed their own reciprocal obligations under the statute. The petitioners are seeking review of the Federal Circuit’s opinion on several grounds, including (i) the restriction of funds to an agency via appropriations rider does not extinguish a statutory payment obligation of the United States, (ii) a rider that does not by its terms repeal or amend a money-mandating statute cannot impliedly and retroactively extinguish the Government’s payment obligation. The Maine petition is linked here.
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Client Alert | 4 min read | 08.07.25
On July 25, 2025, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals issued its decision in United States ex. rel. Sedona Partners LLC v. Able Moving & Storage Inc. et al., holding that a district court cannot ignore new factual allegations included in an amended complaint filed by a False Claims Act qui tam relator based on the fact that those additional facts were learned in discovery, even while a motion to dismiss for failure to comply with the heightened pleading standard under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 9(b) is pending. Under Rule 9(b), allegations of fraud typically must include factual support showing the who, what, where, why, and how of the fraud to survive a defendant’s motion to dismiss. And while that standard has not changed, Sedona gives room for a relator to file first and seek out discovery in order to amend an otherwise deficient complaint and survive a motion to dismiss, at least in the Eleventh Circuit. Importantly, however, the Eleventh Circuit clarified that a district court retains the discretion to dismiss a relator’s complaint before or after discovery has begun, meaning that district courts are not required to permit discovery at the pleading stage. Nevertheless, the Sedona decision is an about-face from precedent in the Eleventh Circuit, and many other circuits, where, historically, facts learned during discovery could not be used to circumvent Rule 9(b) by bolstering a relator’s factual allegations while a motion to dismiss was pending. While the long-term effects of the decision remain to be seen, in the short term the decision may encourage relators to engage in early discovery in hopes of learning facts that they can use to survive otherwise meritorious motions to dismiss.
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