Opinion ID: 2681213
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Weyerhaeuser

Text: 21 Ahumada’s primary allegation against Weyerhaeuser is that, during the time that Ahumada worked at NCED, it “provided NCED with raw sheets as well as complete or nearly complete boxes.” Id. at 261. According to the second amended complaint, Ahumada met with Steve Cartmill, a Weyerhaeuser sales manager, “on many occasions during this period” and took him on tours of the NCED facility. Id. On these tours, Cartmill allegedly saw that NCED failed to employ a sufficient number of disabled workers. The complaint further alleges that Cartmill told Ahumada that Weyerhaeuser was issuing artificially inflated invoices to NCED and later providing rebates, and that NCED had requested Weyerhaeuser to bill for raw sheets rather than complete boxes it actually provided. Based on these allegations, Ahumada asserts that Weyerhaeuser “facilitate[d] NCED’s defrauding of the Government.” Id. at 262. Thus, in contrast to many of the allegations against the other defendants, Ahumada learned the facts underlying the Weyerhaeuser allegations directly through the course of his employment with NCED. See United States ex rel. Barajas v. Northrop Corp., 5 F.3d 407, 411 (9th Cir. 1993) (finding that the relator’s knowledge “was direct and independent because he acquired it during the course of his employment”). To be sure, the information Ahumada alleges he learned from Cartmill might in some sense be characterized as secondhand. But Cartmill was 22 an employee of Weyerhaeuser itself, not an “intervening agency” or “third party.” See Grayson, 221 F.3d at 583 (emphasis added); see also N.Y. Med. Coll., 252 F.3d at 121. And, as further support for his original-source status, Ahumada alleges that he independently confirmed what Cartmill told him about Weyerhaeuser’s billing practices through his own inquiry with NCED’s Controller. Because Ahumada’s knowledge derived from an admission the defendant made to him during the course of Ahumada’s employment- -an admission Ahumada then confirmed “through his own efforts”-- we believe it is sufficiently direct to satisfy the originalsource exception. 5 See Grayson, 221 F.3d at 583; see also United States ex rel. Devlin v. California, 84 F.3d 358, 360 (9th Cir. 1996) (explaining that a relator’s knowledge is direct and independent if he “discovered the information underlying his allegations . . . through his own labor”). Accordingly, the district court did not lack subject-matter jurisdiction over Ahumada’s claims against Weyerhaeuser. 5 Although the second amended complaint again refers to testimony from the Lopez trial, it notes only that the testimony “corroborated” Ahumada’s allegations against Weyerhaeuser. J.A. 261. In other words, the allegations neither derive from the testimony nor directly rely on it. In any event, Ahumada accused Weyerhaeuser of wrongdoing before the Lopez trial began. And no other public disclosure in the record even mentions Weyerhaeuser. 23