The Eleventh Circuit has become the first federal court of appeals to directly address whether the Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause applies to the monetary award in a declined False Claims Act (FCA) case. And in an opinion issued December 29, 2021, the court held that it does. See U.S. ex rel. Yates v. Pinellas Hematology & Oncology, P.A., __ F. 4th __, 2021 WL 6133175 (11th Cir. 2021).
Case Background
The defendant was a clinical laboratory with multiple locations. Some had Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) certificates required to conduct lab tests; others did not. The jury found that the defendant had submitted 214 claims to Medicare in which it falsely represented that tests were performed at locations with CLIA certificates, when in fact they had been performed at locations without CLIA certificates.
The jury found that the United States had sustained $755.54 in actual damages. The district court trebled the government’s actual damages and imposed the lowest per claim civil penalty, $5,500, resulting in a total judgment of $1.179 million. The defendant challenged this award on appeal under the Excessive Fines Clause.
Eleventh Circuit Decision
Recognizing it was the first appellate court to address the issue, the Eleventh Circuit held that “the damages and statutory penalties awarded in a non-intervened FCA qui tam action are subject to the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on excessive fines.” The Eleventh Circuit reached this conclusion by...
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