Mortgage lenders and other entities submitting claims for payment to the federal government should take note of recent case law from the Ninth Circuit emphasizing how private litigants continue to drive litigation under the False Claims Act (FCA), even when the government shows little initiative to proceed (or, in this case, even moves to dismiss).
The First Circuit gave defendant AthenaHealth something extra to celebrate this past holiday season when on December 21, 2022, in United States ex rel. Lovell v. AthenaHealth, Inc., it denied relators’ claims for over $1 million in attorneys’ fees in an appeal involving two issues of first impression.
AthenaHealth was a consolidated appeal involving