Right now, the Supreme Court is considering a case that could boost federal whistleblowers bringing forth wrongdoing by contractors under the False Claims Act. The case underscores the importance of intent and its relevance in these cases. For details and why it’s a landmark case, Federal Drive with Tom Temin spoke to noted D.C. whistleblower attorney Stephen Kohn.
Interview transcript:
Tom Temin Steph, tell us about this case. What is the Supreme Court looking at here precisely?
Stephen Kohn Sure. So it’s the super value case and they’re looking at what type of proof you need to show fraud. And the corporations, the Chamber of Commerce and the companies were arguing that if you could come up with a plausible legal argument, even after the fact, that they didn’t knowingly commit fraud, they could escape liability. So let me put it to a more understandable way and why I believe the Supreme Court will completely reject these arguments. Somebody believes they’re defrauding the government. You have actual evidence of their intent to defraud the government. In fact, they did defraud the government. But somewhere along the line, a company can argue that they should be let off the hook, because there was a plausible argument that they weren’t defrauding the government. So what they were saying was subjective evidence. In other words, evidence of the actual people ripping off the taxpayer, evidence of their intent to rip off the taxpayer could be ignored if the company came up...
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