Opinion ID: 4561954
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Eisenstein is silent on the question before us

Text: Resisting this reading of the statute, Sanofi and Bristol rely on the Supreme Court’s decision in Eisenstein. But Eisenstein addressed a very different question: the time limit for filing a notice of appeal in False Claims Act suits. See 556 U.S. at 929. Typically, parties to civil cases have 30 days, but when the United States is a party, the limit is 60 days. See Fed. R. App. P. 4(a)(1)(A)–(B). The Court held that even though False Claims Act suits are always on behalf of the United States, the Government is not a “party” to the litigation for purposes of appellate procedure when it has declined to intervene. Id. at 937. In reaching its conclusion, the Court discussed the relationship between the terms “party” and “intervention.” See Eisenstein, 556 U.S. at 932–34. “[W]hen the term [to intervene] is used in reference to legal proceedings, it covers the right of one to interpose in, or become a party to, a proceeding already instituted.” Id. at 933 (emphasis and second alteration in original) (quoting Rocca v. Thompson, 223 U.S. 317, 330 (1912)). Because intervening is how the United States becomes a party to a qui tam suit, the Court held, it is not a party unless it intervenes. Id. 14 The first-to-file bar was not before the Eisenstein Court. Nor did Eisenstein turn on the meaning of “intervene.” So Sanofi and Bristol’s reliance on Eisenstein hinges on a single sentence from the discussion referred to above: “The Court has further indicated that intervention is the requisite method for a non-party to become a party to a lawsuit.” 556 U.S. at 933. According to Bristol and Sanofi, this sentence proves that intervention is not just one way, but the only way, for a party to enter a lawsuit. The Tenth Circuit has likewise taken that broad a view of Eisenstein’s dictum. United States ex rel. Little v. Triumph Gear, 870 F.3d at 1246–48. Put another way, any time a party enters (or becomes a party in) a lawsuit, it must have intervened. We reject this overreading. We must read Eisenstein, like any opinion, in context. Judicial opinions are not statutes, from which we squeeze all we can out of every last word. Rather, we try to understand the Court’s language against the backdrop of the particular controversy that the Court was resolving. See, e.g., Illinois v. Lidster, 540 U.S. 419, 424 (2004); Cohens v. Virginia, 19 U.S. (6 Wheat.) 264, 399 (1821) (Marshall, C.J.). Eisenstein was about appellate timing and Government intervention, not the first-to-file bar for private parties. The parties neither briefed nor argued about how private parties intervene. The bar’s plain text, not a stray dictum about that text, resolves its meaning. Thus, the first-to-file bar reaches intervention under Rule 24 or the bringing of a new action on the same facts, but not 15 other methods of joining an existing case like joinder, substitution of parties, or amendment of a complaint. So it does not bar New JKJ’s participation as a relator here.