presents to clean legal questions about the authority and the intent of the only general assembly when they passed the illinois insurance claims fraud prevention act in two thousand and one the first issue is whether the general assembly has the power or authority to use a key to mechanism to fight insurance fraud that is the can't stack the constitutional standing issue and the second issue is what the general assembly intended when they authorize a quote interested person including an insurer to sue with the attorney general under section fifteen a of the act and that is the statutory standing or statutory interpretation issue and you needn't come to any other hind legs in which the legislature has provided that a private citizen can enforce the state's sovereign authority to impose fines and penalties for violations of its why yes your honor we've cited the to enforce my own interest plus i mean this is it's the insurance company that is to fraud and the state certainly could impose fines and penalties for their crime but the plaintiff isn't a friday laws which we just talked about the network and the proprietary injury which means actual damages so when you look at those cases they're saying you need one plus two or think they are not you're honoring either one  agency or sketchy that both are required from an agency relies on old and former statutes that did not involve injury fiscal injury to the state and says that history is well nigh conclusive of the issue requires the fiscal injury is the state in addition to language says that they are the sign me of the state's right to bring suit that statute here and that did not say that it's a right to bring suit on a matter of damage is what you're saying is just to take from the f c a and apply directly to the insurance ride to me doesn't allow for any interpretation at all you're saying it's a fait accompli but your honor it's not just about the yes yes right yes that was the particular key tam statute before the court but there is a long history that from an agency details and we add to free illinois of honor the state will have a financial interest in recovering from the lawsuit they also have an interest in fighting and assurance fraud i mean they do fight insurance fraud through other mechanisms the attorney general's office through the depart of insurance those monitoring enforcement costs have that this will impact on the state and b deputizing the whistleblower here the general assembly was explicit in their legislative task force report where they said we thought about letting the state further in force insurance fraud and they said that would take too many resources they were concerned about resources and that's it appendix page forty eight and forty nine is the report and they said instead we're going to have a strong whistleblower statute because fraud is often covert the government it would take a lot of resources to find and prosecute these cases instead they've set up a system in the long history of the tam statutes with an incentive where the private relator can litigate with the attorney general always with and under the control of the attorney general to fight insurance fraud that is the mechanism the attorney general the general assembly chose and there is no case that says they cannot do that there is no legal precedent the defendants may argue about the policy wisdom they may say this isn't common but there's no basis to say they do not have the we have to declare this act on constitutional i believe you would your honor particularly the key tempore sion of it maybe the part regarding of course attorney general would survive and we have to think about that but they are saying that the general the attorney general the general assembly does not have the authority to do this that is their arguments as a constitutional matter and recall that we presume you know an oist actions are constitutional and our constitution is not a grant of rights it's a check on rights and there is nothing in the on my constitution agency and they said rejected the argument in two thousand and ten they are held the key to him statute a federal key term statute that did not involve this were lost to the state because they said both injuries are interest of the sovereign both are injuries in fact and seriously and on the constitutional issue your honor even if we step back and look at this as a matter of assignment of because claims under kleinwort we know that in illinois the rule is that legal claims are assignable and non assigned ability is the exception and there there's nothing further on the constitutional issue your honor as i'd like to turn to the statutory interpretation question and this is the issue about whether the attorney general simply intended to enable all individuals with nonpublic information to bring suit with the attorney general now defendants want to know if i did he tell mechanism of this statute by requiring that the relator personally have suffered some injury to a legal interest that is antithetical to the key to mechanism as sketchy to  explain the entire purpose is to serve the state's interest and related interests is irrelevant under the defendant's interpretation other than the defrauded insurance company would have the ability to pursue  think that is telling all they suggest that if for example ms cahill was fired as a result of her disclosure of this information she might have a person interest what she would certainly have an interest in a retaliation your honor but if you think about it for a moment that cannot be the measure of who is an interesting person first it's circular i really would have to file suit in order to experience retaliation in order to be allowed to file suit nobody would get in the door i doesn't even talk about the person bringing the case the religion yes so it's not a separate cause of action unrelated to the rather right therefore it seems that the penalties whether a relator suffered retaliation suits the penalties or whether relate or with no retaliation since the penalties the purpose is served equally and drawing these new distinctions between who is interested and isn't based on whether they've experienced retaliation would simply go to the limit and got the statute there's no suggestion that they were trying to limit the statute here the reasoning is a lot like the kleinwort case rather that's where the supreme court bill annoy determined that q damages claims are assignable and they said if you yes your honor we put forth that the phrase is simply describing the relator and the relator is the person with the nonpublic information you do have to have something to bring a case you have to know something about the fraud and you can't just rely on public reports that is why you have an interest you have useful information to come to the government and that is who is empowered by the general assembly to bring a lawsuit under your honour's the defendants here are major health care corporations and they are committing an intentional fraud there and in the industry they are well aware of the power of a key tam suits for fighting that fraud and they see the liability they would like to rewrite this law and right thank you thank you the act in addition the record contains two other independent grounds that support affirm and the complaint fails to leap frog with particulary and this action is barred by release so i'll ask you the same question i asked mr do we have to declare this statute unconstitutional i would say no i think our argument is more that you have to hide here you have to bring your own interest interest a person has meaning and that supports the standing argument so there are people and city is that can bring great briefly bring suits under these here other than the defrauded insurance company well i would see someone that paid more insurance due to fraud so it could be a  paid too much for my insurance now i get to recover the fines and penalties on behalf of the state that would be ok well it's not on behalf of the state in that case they have their own injury i mean i think we need to go back to what the principle of standing requires it's an injury in fact to legally in a different way other than just by bringing in direct action but you have to have sanding and i think that's what says she stands for isn't it a sort of loop that you get lost in because if it only covers the insurance company itself it's been  the patient for him who figures out somehow that oh there's something wrong here then the the patient there there are going to be patients like that their patients are going to say well i got this great insurance plan done and i didn't have to pay as much for my glasses for my optical care so why am i going to be for about that i'll just i'm going to see quite a bit because i got a benefit out of it i do this insurance right i like the insurance very well i think you need to remove it from the context of this case because the question is whether anyone can can bring sooner than insurance but then that also begs the question how would a patient even know about well another example i would guess is this case in california the statute actually arose out of the car insurance fraud contacts and i would there's i picture it accident where there is there's an accident there's a coverage up to five hundred thousand dollars two people injured person one files a false insurance more limited range of situations than the plaintiff's interpretation of the well but you say that but then i don't understand why they have a separate section and i tell a story this charge you're saying basically that only applies to insurance companies employees although it the term in arrested really is not to be emphasized as much as the idea that it's a person who has some information it's descriptive of a person with information but they're after they just call a person so how do you reconcile  well i don't think that you actually can i mean i think he used interesting person but it's interesting contrasts the false claims act which is the only other key to him on the books in illinois it says a person and it's action can be anyone so this have much president here so we really need to see other california law is there much of anything else in california law other interested persons so there's a there's a wide range of cases in california actually some of which are stated in our  not say that but that's a california public it's not the definitive proclamation of the california appellate court to quote but there are other cases that and one of which is cited in our brief which says that it's and it's meant to be for insurance companies and there are other i mean it's not the same wide spectrum of those so it was this just in order to compact insurance for the states in addition to their contract only purpose of the session i mean there's nothing prohibiting the state from passing duplicative statutes it seems like this is a way to punish it more because it's it's essentially the injured party someone with standing which is not the  well it's an interesting person including an insurance company so that's that's the only example that's given of who a proper relator would be under the key tamper vision they don't fill in the blanks but i think why say including insurance companies mean i think that the statute is is not internally consistent but the fact is they use this language in california the term interest a person has meaning it means someone with a legal interest it's not just any person and the only other  just because they're not following now doesn't mean that they haven't been brought back in fact they haven't dropped back in terms of the him actions i mean that's the way that they've been brought back in modern times where we do have much more  if you look at squishy they actually divide the standing challenge into two sections there's sort of is there injury in facts and then they look at there's a constitutional separation of powers challenge which is that it's sort of unconstitutionally taking but   its police power but if you accept that then the state can do that and i mean it opens the entire concept of standing ok the state have the power to say to the court forget it dismisses case they didn't do th g checks it out and that to me closes down with the interest because it's not just an innocent person who was a patient lost some money somehow which i personally think is going to be very or be very hard to find  that's still doesn't explain how they have their own standing in this case i mean that here the bankruptcy estate is essentially akin to a witness witnesses do not get to have an interest in bringing a lawsuit they have a claim that they have witness insurance fraud and they have this information and if the state wants to report that through setting up a sort of reward or some other bounty system but this isn't just that it's giving them an interest in the lawsuit they are standing with the state bringing this this case and there's no explanation of how they have the ability to do that the victim is the insurance company here v s p we don't know what they even think of this claim because they're not a party to the case that's very different from the false claims that contacts where you know that the government has damages because that is the foundation of the whole suit you know how they feel about the damages we don't know how the victim feels here it's an odd statute that you have someone who hasn't been injured herself or itself and comes in with information but think but there's been no allegation and granted i know this is sort of outside the record but the claims have not stopped being paid there's no allegation about it so you have a you have a lot to give someone who has been injured the right to come in and sue maybe that maybe family vision care or maybe d s p does not think this is fraud we don't know that because they're not part of the scheme and that's one of the flaws in the statute and that's where the standing question is so important is when when someone has their own standing then they have an interest in the case that is kind create that's why standing is required to bring suit in illinois this the plaintiff's interpretation of what this law does would open the concept assuming it would allow the legislature to do an end run around requirement like that it sounds like we have to declare this thing action or at least keeping them provision unconstitutional because the insurance company is a proper relator and there are we don't know what other examples of a proper relator there are but you don't need to decide that to decide this case i don't know enough about the details of vacuous we know you don't know enough about any case then if that's right i mean any case you cite all you know is what's in the cases so based upon what's in that case can you answer the question i there's an irreconcilable standing problem took to hold it the way that they want you to hold would be to say that you don't need your understanding that this that this is ok that you can just bring suit to vindicates this the state's interest in differentiates and it premise is the standing and the damages claim so the question that's hanging out there is if there is no damages claim how does that relate or who becomes a real party in interest how do they get their standing and i don't know the answer to state can assign its sovereign right so collect these fines and penalties in the interest of pursuing insurance fraud and nothing says the state can't do that i think i gues the nature of a claim  and what you need for standing an injury to the status sovereign is not a distinct and palpable injury and it's not a cause of action that can be brought by any other party it's sort of unique to the state its unique power damages you can see how the provided agency and courts adopted that because even if damages are against the state that's an ordinary civil claim of the kind that is regularly assigned this is this is different and as your wrist pointed out there is no law that says that you can assign a sovereign interest even if the general principle is that cases can be assigned a cause of action can be assigned this is not a cause of action there is no distinct impalpable injury to the case that the state state would not be able to bring a civil action based on this because of an injury it's because the state has the part of enforce the laws and if if this statute is allowed to stand in the state can sort of deputized other random citizens with no interest or connection to the case but the interest is the possession of material nonpublic information not available to the public and so that's the real letters interest is i've got this information that the state is or the insurance company is being defrauded and nobody else knows it but me and so i'm the interested party who can pursue this claim that's information but how is that an injury lawsuit and so that's really the crux of the issue here if you have any other questions about this issue i'd be happy to discuss it i just like to quickly move her to other arguments has every claim submitted was fraudulent because it did not it wasn't submitted on behalf of an entity controlled by a physician and the defendant knew that what else do you need to know to defend  case well i mean you have to see what kind of representations were made to b s t beyond that contract it's not about just one one representation it's about all the claims so what we're presentations are made in the claims how do we know that that with material to and that's a totally conclusory allegation that it was material to him and that they wouldn't have paid if they had no there's no who was where like there's just nothing there to show that these claims would not have been paid he on that there are allegations except for the fact that it was in the country mission with the staff well it is in the contract but there's a lot of provisions that contract and it's not clear that that is one that's material to payment if they found out that that had not been it here too can explain where it comes from i mean she says that it comes from the state assigning its sovereign interests but that's not a distinct palpable trace of all redress the injury it just isn't so it would be a very glaring exception i mean as the plaintiff pointed out  statutes are presumed to be constitutional and you should presume that the illinois supreme court intended this statute to fit with existing concepts of standing not up and it you have no further questions we would just ask that you refer to the decision book