A U.S. District Court judge ruled Tuesday the Birmingham Jefferson County Transit Authority (BJCTA) must pay $4,315,403.22 in damages based on a False Claims Act (FCA) lawsuit filed in 2018 by a former employee and former board chair alleging the agency didn’t comply with all federal regulations regarding grant funding from the Federal Transit Authority (FTA).
The amount is triple the base damage amount of $1,438,467.74, as required by the FCA.
In the order, U.S. District Judge Corey L. Maze also ruled The BJCTA must also pay “an amount for reasonable [plaintiff] expenses which the court finds to have been necessarily incurred, plus reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs.”
Maze additionally awarded a civil penalty of $308,000, calculated based on $14,000 for each of 22 FCA violations.
The ruling came within a day of the one-year anniversary of Judge Maze’s ruling that the BJCTA must pay $1,080,000 in damages, plus the civil penalty. That figure was calculated after the original amount of funds the U.S. government granted the BJCTA ($1,438,467.74) was lowered based on a ruling that the agency received a “benefit” of only $1,078,467.14.
The difference (approx. $360,000) was tripled to reach the $1,080,000 amount assessed in 2022.
The BJCTA filed a 50(b) motion, which was denied in this week’s ruling. In the new order, Judge Maze revised the base amount of the damages back to the original $1,438,467.74, the basis for the newest damages owed.
According to the FCA statute, the...
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