what bruce monday did and what bruce month intended to do in his conversations with chief dempsey after mine had assumed managerial responsibility for the contract with the sheriff's department he determined that the sheriff's department had been overpaying under that contract by as much as eighty six thousand dollars a year he intended to and did bring he's overpayments to the attention of chief mc so that the problem could be corrected and it was what bruce man did not realize court is whether the conduct of mine is sufficiently tethered to the false claims act to constitute protected behavior under government code section well six five three b we would certainly contend that it was and the reason is that mine's conduct was directed to the overpayment of claims and it was the over and it was it was his bringing that attention and the accounting irregularities that were at play to the attention of chief dempsey that directly resulted in the return of one hundred fifty thousand fifty five thousand dollars of taxpayers money to the taxpayers the second issue that i feel is very important for the court to appreciate is the language of the two statutes that are germane to this discussion the defense's position relies on the following interpretation that the phrase disclosing information in government code section twelve six five three b contains within it a requirement of santer in other words the defendant of a plaintiff seeking the protection of twelve six five three must intend to do something must have a reasonably based suspicion of wrongdoing the problem with this interpretation of this approach is that labor code section eleven o two point five uses the exact same language but disclosing information language but then in that instance the legislature continues on and it does so to add specifically santer language to the requirements of labor because action eleven o two point five in other words the disclosing information phrase as determined by the legislature wasn't enough to add the requirements of c enter it needed to specifically at it and it did not do that within the confines of the government code and what we feel is the fundamental error of the district court was grafting language from eleven o two point five into government code section twelve six five three b that isn't there the third point i would like to bring to the court's attention in terms of the underlying findings of the district court where the district court's contention that the only evidence that pointed submitted of a causal relationship between his terminations and the protected activity was the timing in other words they both occurred at the same time we don't believe that this is a fair recitation of the evidence or a record that we placed before the court and it is before this court why shouldn't there be a knowledge and i'm not talking about the language but the terms of the policy what we're talking about here i think that the answer to that question your honor can be found in the false claims act itself in section twelve sixty five five star paragraph c which reads this article shall be liberally construed and applied to promote the public interest and if and acting the false claims act the legislature wasn't attempting to adopt a statute that specifically regulated the conduct of employees that wasn't the intention it was attempting to get at another mean by inadvertence justice rose is that he he intended to disclose information but he didn't appreciate that the information he disclosed would reveal on a practice that was fraudulent because he didn't know it but once he told the sheriff the sheriff immediately realized well this sounds like double billing to me that he tell the sheriff that as a law enforcement agency or as a  client he told the sheriff there under the and the language of the statute as a governmental agency now i think that's what i'm after is i'm not sure that twelve sixty three b threats because it just happened to be a law enforcement agency but that wasn't the purpose here wasn't to turn over information to a law enforcement agency for investigation testimony assistance in an action to be filed it just happens to be that the sheriff wasn't in this case isn't functioning in  a a law enforcement agency at all just functioning as somebody buys food that's certainly true justice to if so how does twelve six fifty three work then here when you have this kind of a factual situation i would suggest that it works the following way the bruce money approach to this city official for the purpose of addressing a contractual and billing irregularity he didn't appreciate that irregular nothing to do with reporting wrongdoing nothing to do with that that absolutely correct roger so i am having trouble seeing how fifty three b works then because it seems to me to be designed to protect people who go to law enforcement agencies for law enforcement purposes but it doesn't say that in the statute you are it seems to me to say that the statute reads that no one knows information to a government or a law enforcement agency or and or in furtherance of a false claim including investigation initiation of testimony for assistance in an action filed or to be filed under six fifty two and your guy was simply walking in saying talking about an economic event that he didn't even appreciate the consequences of it until that dempsey said wait a minute you know we're getting double billed here certainly on what i've just seen that your your client was doing any of the things phrase it simply requires mr mind to have disclosed information to a governmental law enforcement agency which is what he did and that is our contention now certainly if you were to look at the second half of this jump to phrase i think your honor would be correct in reading into that really is the whole to me it's as if you report something to the cops you're protected well he did report something to the no he was just discussing this this with a client who was buying things wrong he didn't even appreciate well i suppose then i mean when i when i look at the statute your honor and the overall effect that it's designed to have certainly the legislature appreciated that fraud on the public treasury is going to take place largely through the vendors that the agency uses that the governmental agencies do spend money largely through contractors and this is what's happening here so in that capacity mr mine is approaching it is true he is approaching someone with whom he has a business relationship but he's also approaching someone through whom the city pays money which is the underlying intent of the false claims act to get acland to get out instances when the city is spending money this is generally call honor is that we don't look to metaphor but we look to the language that the legislature gave us but how can you be a whistle for when he doesn't know it well in a little bit and then we get back to my point i think your honor which is that i don't think that in that instance that metaphor probably serves us very well the language of the statute is what's to drive the analysis william work on behalf of america aramark correctional services inc bruce money was an at will employee who was fired for falsifying inventory information he admitted that he violated  but there are it is the law the timing is not enough and the timing is close in this instance because the two things occurred closed in time and i will i don't think i need given the court's questions on the statutory issue to to argue that further i think there is some we ask a lot of questions doesn't necessarily mean that we believe what the premises or the insinuations are well then let me let me go to the the reasons there are two independent reasons why the government code section twelve six five three does does not apply in this case in the first place intent is required under  victor it was the finding of the court on its way to a decision it wasn't directly necessary for the court to reach but it was a director it is it is a it was picked up and just do an end run on that statute which requires reason we play based decision it is a false claims is this is a part of the whistleblower statute there's no discussion in the legislative history which suggests that the legislature was trying to radically change the way the false claims act matters would be brought and it's a just a shorter initial question the purpose of this act is not helped by the interpretation which the mr mom would provide the purpose of it is to encourage an employee with knowledge of a false claim to come forward and then to discourage an  from stopping that person from doing it and that has nothing to do with what happened in this case where mr munn did not know that the billing practice that he was discussing was in any way improper and he continued to hold that belief for a couple of for months after the initial discussion i want to go to the causation question just so that you've described i think it is understood viewed that the chain of events to mr moggs terminations was from the food service manager in san bruno to the national sales manager rick burns who went to the new regional vice president mike who to check  who ordered an investigation by rich sister in which mr monitored that he falsified inventory information and violated the business conduct policy and he was terminated as a result of that speculation as to as to any sort of what went and they mr munn makes to i asked two questions about that one is why did it happen so close in time will it happen so close in time because these two events occurred so close in time and then he says well why weren't others disappointing besides me well the three people who had knowledge of this two of them were it terminating whether variances existed in written documentation when he did his on his audit and april and he determined that there were variances between what mr monk was reporting and the written documentation it was not his job and he did not go digging into the question of why those variances work earning that's not what the auditors function was there's no evidence that mr mom told mr mon was reporting and what the document written documentation showed so you're for example six fifty six talking about the five thousand and sixty eight pounds of sausage topping this is where you say he explain what he was doing and you can't tell what the other side is talking about without doing more testing you couldn't know whether it was right or wrong well if you're referring to it is it is in that evidence and i think you have to read it what mr service was eating first when he was shown those pieces of paper he didn't have a recollection but what he found of what he found there was simply that there were variances and he couldn't he could do nothing more with them but he wasn't he could not make a determination mr mom didn't tell him that the actual sausage wasn't there are what he that he had created a false the camp case did apply at the macand in case did apply those cases i think are are clear and we meet the tests that are laid out and blowing this is a cause of action germination which is affected months conduct and that conduct here in the false vacation of inventory goes to the very heart of the employment relationship and the purpose of the whistleblower statute is not undercut by applying  why is there a genuine issue of fact on your claim that the company knew about this double billing practice and didn't do anything about it until the whole the other problem blew up there are several answers to that question your honor two of which are the most  but the first is that this individual tony washington who was acting as the food service director for the jail at issue complains to the two district manic manager of sorry complained to the two district managers over and over and over again and then when he didn't get any satisfactory results he went above their head to the regional vice president who function in the same capacity as mr hu to check who ultimately oversee all the investigation so the idea behind this billing practice that aramark now finds objectionable is very analogous if you will to the colorado city decision where plaintiffs in that instance think gaijin a certain line of conduct that was characterized in the exact same fashion and personally approved by the district manager we've got evidence in the record to that effect or was simply ignored when presented to tony truong the regional vice president or the replacement just a device manager the district manager saying so all of these people ignored this conduct before mr money gage what we characterize as protected activity and as soon as the protected activity bore fruit they were they the decision makers yes they were your honor i would also point out to you get out of  tourist this testimony that i just read it for the second time and i don't see that establishes very much you in your favor certainly or are you more than happy to address that i would in particular address the court's attention to a couple of points in the evidentiary record the first would be that what look at what the source was charged with he was charged with going out to this site and looking to see what was there what's key here is this roger the the way that they ran the billing practices at the san francisco jail was that they didn't record a physical inventory on the site it was there they just didn't record it on the books what monday did was he created the physical inventory on the books so that he could appropriately carry this balance for the sheriff's department what that in order for him to do that he had to write that down he had to put that in a document and it is that a wreck or dacian which the defendant characterizes as the falsification of records one of those examples of a document can be found what he did was he reflected a balance in order to accurately reflect the amount of money that this to the sheriff's department owed aramark so it wasn't inaccurate to the degree that it represented what the city owed it was his method of recording the balance that the city owed aramark so just to get back to justice trott's question so the source of your honor reviewed these specific documents he went out to the site he looked at the inventory he noted the variances that appear on these inventory analysis the very ones in question and then he reported his findings to cisco so certainly what one inference to be drawn from the evidence is as mr or there i would just like to close by reiterating what i believe are five pieces of evidence that we have to establish the calls the relationship between the terminations and what we would characterize as the protected activity first there was knowledge on the part of a that month had engaged in this activity to their treatment of him going negative treatment of him began immediately after that knowledge was the timing issue three there was a before and after treatment and spoken  ok you're right i guess the only thing i can analogize it to is if let's say for instance chief ganci had had some suspicion that something's not right this accounting system isn't working for me i think something's wrong but i'm not sure what it is and i don't want to put the issue on the table but bruce fein is a really nice guy he's been pretty friendly with us and he seems very honest i'm going to hold him in here and i'm going to ask him about it now in an instance mr mann wouldn't have any idea that he was openly assisting chief ganci in an effort to get at an act of fraudulent billing he would not have intended to blow the whistle but that would have to have been exactly what would happen in that instance and i would