The Eleventh Circuit recently became the first Court of Appeals to apply the Supreme Court’s decision in United States ex rel. Polansky v. Executive Health Resources, Inc., 143 S. Ct. 1720 (2023), when it affirmed a district court’s decision to grant DOJ’s motion to dismiss a qui tam suit over a relator’s objections. In Polansky, which we analyzed in detail here, the Supreme Court held that the United States may move to dismiss under 31 U.S.C. § 3730(c)(2)(A) regardless of when it intervened in the case and that courts should review any such motion under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 41(a). The Eleventh Circuit’s decision underscores the United States’ broad dismissal power in False Claims Act cases.
The underlying qui tam before the Eleventh Circuit was filed by the relator in August 2013 against two physicians, their clinic, their pharmacy, and a company they contracted with to perform certain services. The United States declined to intervene but pursued a simultaneous criminal case against the physicians, which partially overlapped with the relator’s qui tam. In those proceedings, the United States ultimately obtained a jury verdict against the two physicians that resulted in criminal forfeiture proceedings. In parallel, the physicians, their clinic, and their pharmacy defaulted in the relator’s qui tam in 2017. All that was left was for the relator to obtain a default judgment against those parties. Instead, over the next four years, the relator filed several motions...
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