U.S.A Ex Rel. Snapp Inc v. Ford Motor Co.
Decision Date | 01 September 2010 |
Docket Number | No. 09-1654.,09-1654. |
Citation | 618 F.3d 505 |
Parties | UNITED STATES of America ex rel. SNAPP, INC., Plaintiff-Appellant,v.FORD MOTOR COMPANY, Defendant-Appellee. |
Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit |
ARGUED: David H. Fink, The Miller Law Firm, P.C., Rochester, Michigan, for Appellant. Francis R. Ortiz, Dickinson Wright PLLC, Detroit, Michigan, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: David H. Fink, E. Powell Miller, The Miller Law Firm, P.C., Rochester, Michigan, for Appellant. Francis R. Ortiz, Kenneth J. McIntyre, Jodi Munn Schebel, Dickinson Wright PLLC, Detroit, Michigan, for Appellee.
Before: BOGGS and CLAY, Circuit Judges; and WISEMAN, District Judge.*
SNAPP, Inc. (“SNAPP” or “Relator”) appeals from an order of the district court denying its motion to alter or amend a final judgment so as to permit it to file an amended complaint in litigation brought pursuant to the False Claims Act (“FCA”), 31 U.S.C. § 3729 et seq. SNAPP argues that the district court erred in concluding that the proposed amended complaint, which included a list of contracts that the Government allegedly entered into as a result of fraudulent representations on the part of Ford, did not allege with sufficient particularity the existence of a “claim” as defined by the FCA.
This case is before us for the second time. See United States ex rel. SNAPP, Inc. v. Ford Motor Co., 532 F.3d 496 (6th Cir.2008) (“ SNAPP I ”). In SNAPP I, we set forth the relevant factual and procedural history, as it existed to that point, as follows:
Id. at 499-502 (citations and footnotes omitted). Following the district court's dismissal of SNAPP's First Amended Complaint and its denial of SNAPP's motion to file a Second Amended Complaint, SNAPP filed its appeal in SNAPP I.
On appeal, we affirmed the dismissal of SNAPP's First Amended Complaint on Rule 9(b) grounds, finding that the complaint's allegation that “[f]rom 1991 through at least 2001, Ford was awarded contracts on an annual basis by the General Services Administration,” coupled with an estimate of the approximate value of those contracts, failed to comply with the Rule 9(b) requirement that a relator “state with particularity the circumstances constituting fraud or mistake.” SNAPP I, 532 F.3d at 504-06.
Specifically, we observed that the portion of the FCA under which SNAPP now alleges a cause of action 1 “imposes liability on a person who ‘knowingly makes, uses, or causes to be made or used, a false record or statement to get a false or fraudulent claim paid or approved by the Government.’ ” 2 SNAPP I, 532 F.3d at 504 (quoting 31 U.S.C. § 3729(a)(2)). We then noted that a cause of action under that portion of the FCA contained several elements, including: (1) that the defendant make a false statement or create a false record with actual knowledge, deliberate ignorance, or reckless disregard of the truth or falsity of the information; (2) that the defendant have submitted a claim for payment to the federal government; (3) that the defendant's false statement have been made with the purpose of getting a false or fraudulent claim paid or approved by the Government; and (4) that the false statement or record have been material to the Government's decision to make the payment sought in the defendant's claim. Id. at 504-05. We found that SNAPP had adequately pleaded the existence of a false statement or record, and that Rule 9(b) did not require SNAPP to plead the elements dealing with Ford's state of mind with particularity.
However, we further observed that, given that SNAPP had alleged a “complex and far-reaching fraudulent scheme,” it was subject to a rule of law recently established in United States ex rel. Bledsoe v. Community Health Systems, Inc., 501 F.3d 493 (6th Cir.2007) (“ Bledsoe II ”). Under the rule of Bledsoe II, a relator who alleges such a complex and far-reaching fraudulent scheme need not state with particularityall of the false claims made over the course of the scheme, but must nevertheless “include specific examples of the defendant's claims for payment” that are “characteristic example[s] ... illustrative of [the] class of all claims covered by the fraudulent scheme.” SNAPP I, 532 F.3d at 506 (quoting Bledsoe II, 501 F.3d at 510-11) (internal quotation marks omitted). With that in mind, we held in SNAPP I that:
Despite the requirement that Relator must provide specific examples...
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