Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-1326_6jfl.pdf
Page Number: 18

Cite as:  598 U. S. ____ (2023) 

15 

Opinion of the Court 

argument is as follows: At common law, misrepresentations 
of  law  are  not  actionable;  only  misrepresentations  of  fact 
are.  Because  the  FCA  incorporates  the  common  law  of 
fraud,  it  embodies  that  same  limitation.  And  the  claims 
here  would  have  been  knowingly  false  only  because  re-
spondents  correctly  understood  what  “usual  and  custom-
ary” meant.  Therefore, respondents conclude, their reports 
were not false because of any misrepresentation of fact; to 
the  contrary,  their  claims  would  have  been  false  only  be-
cause of their view of the law. 

But those premises do not support that conclusion.  To be 
sure,  many  courts  appear  to  have  stated—as  a  general
rule—that misrepresentations of law are not actionable at 
common law.  See Restatement (Second) of Torts §545; W. 
Keeton,  D.  Dobbs,  R.  Keeton,  &  D.  Owen,  Prosser  and 
Keeton  on  Law  of  Torts  §109,  pp. 758–759  (5th  ed.  1984) 
(Prosser & Keeton).  So, for example, if a defendant had told 
the plaintiff, “your claim will be dismissed because federal 
courts  lack  jurisdiction  over  claims  like  that,”  that  repre-
sentation  might  not  be  actionable  as  a  fraud.    See  ibid.; 
Utah Power & Light Co. v. Federal Ins. Co., 983 F. 2d 1549, 
1556 (CA10 1993).  Varying rationales appear to have been
given  for  this  rule,  including  that  such  statements  are  of 
mere opinion and that no one could justifiably rely on them.
See Dobbs §677, at 688.

For purposes of these cases, we assume without deciding 
that the FCA incorporates some version of this rule; even 
then, the rule has significant limits on its own terms.  As 
relevant here, statements involving some legal analysis re-
main actionable if they “carry with [them] by implication” 
an assertion about “facts that justify” the speaker’s state-
ment.  Restatement (Second) of Torts §545, Comment c; see 
also  Prosser  &  Keeton  §109,  at  759.    So,  as a  contrasting 
example,  a  person  might  be  liable  for  falsely  stating  that
“the plumbing work that I did on your house complied with 
state law.”  See Sorenson v. Gardner, 215 Ore. 255, 261, 334