Court Opinion

ID: 9856977
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 07:09:10.952405+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:37:41.393171
License: Public Domain

COOK, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
The majority reaches the right conclusion with regard to the district court’s dismissal of Relator’s First Amended Complaint. Relator’s failure to “provide a single example of a specific [false] claim” doomed that complaint because Fed. R.Civ.P. 9(b) ‘“does not permit a False Claims Act plaintiff merely to describe a private scheme in detail but then to allege simply ... that claims requesting illegal payment must have been submitted, were likely submitted or should have been submitted to the Government.’ ” Maj. Op. at 506 (quoting Sanderson v. HCA-The Healthcare Co., 447 F.3d 873, 877 (6th Cir .2006)).
But having correctly concluded that Relator’s First Amended Complaint deserves dismissal, the majority nevertheless keeps alive the Second Amended Complaint, despite the district court’s finding that it too failed to identify a false claim. JA 21. Although the majority cannot point to a false claim identified by the Second Amended Complaint,1 it vacates and remands after concluding that United States ex rel. Bledsoe v. Cmty. Health Sys., Inc. (“Bledsoe IF), 501 F.3d 493 (6th Cir.2007), announced an intervening change in controlling law which the district court ought to apply in the first instance. Bledsoe II, however, broke new ground on an impertinent issue — whether every false claim must be identified by a False Claims Act plaintiff alleging a complex, fraudulent scheme. Id. at 509-10. It did not disturb, alter, or modify the requirement to specifically identify at least one false claim-“the sine qua non of a False Claims Act violation.” Sanderson, 447 F.3d at 878 (internal quotation marks omitted); see also Maj. Op. at 503-06 (affirming dismissal of Relator’s First Amended Complaint for failing to identify “a specific [false] claim”). Because the Second Amended Complaint also identifies no false claim, I see no reason to remand to the district court so that it may reissue the same decision. Nor do I see a reason to require another panel of this court to re-confront this case — it should be resolved today.
Accordingly, I respectfully dissent from part II of the majority’s opinion.

. In his footnote 8, Judge Clay highlights specific contracts that the plaintiffs allege the government awarded to Ford as a result of Ford’s fraud and the dollar value attached to those contracts. But a contract is not a claim.