Opinion ID: 221854
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Annex AG Claim Reconciliation of Payments

Text: Finally, Yannacopoulos argues that Annex AG of Modification Six implicitly represented that an agreed-upon refund of $29,926,515 to the United States government was the totality of [the loan] funds that [the] defendants had been paid for the value of ... work that they never performed. [23] This implicit representation, he says, was false because Lockheed secretly retained over $21 million in advance payments for the value of work it never performed. As noted above, a claim under the False Claims Act requires proof of an objective falsehood. See Wilson, 525 F.3d at 376. In the context of a contractual agreement such as Modification Six, an objective falsehood requires proof that the parties did not actually reach the agreement set forth therein. Yannacopoulos does not claim that Lockheed and Greece did not actually agree to the refunds set forth in Modification Six, however. Instead, he says only that they implicitly represented that the refunds provided for in that modification were the only funds that Lockheed had been paid for work it had not completed. But see Lamers, 168 F.3d at 1018 (noting that imprecise statements are not actionable false statements). Yannacopoulos provides no evidentiary support for such a strained reading between the lines of Modification Six, apparently believing that a bald assertion about that modification's meaning should suffice. It does not. See, e.g., Drake v. Minn. Min. & Mfg. Co., 134 F.3d 878, 887 (7th Cir.1998) (Rule 56 demands something more than the bald assertion of the general truth of a particular matter, rather it requires ... specific concrete facts establishing the existence of the truth of the matter asserted.) (quotation omitted). At its core, Yannacopoulos' complaint is that Lockheed and Greece reached an agreement that allowed Lockheed to collect additional [loan] funds for the remaining contract work as if it had retained no advance payments. But this is nothing more than an argument that the parties should have agreed in Modification Six to refund more than a mere $29,926,515. Even if that may be true as a matter of contract law and sound public policy, that would not make Modification Six false. And absent evidence of a knowing falsehood, Yannacopoulos' final claim stumbles right out of the gate. [24] The judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED.