Court Opinion

ID: 9487574
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:20:51.569298+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:21.992552
License: Public Domain

*1050DAVID A. NELSON, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I concur in .the judgment and in all but Part II of the court’s opinion, where the constitutionality of the qui tam provisions of the False Claims Act is upheld.
The constitutional question is a troubling one for me. I am somewhat dubious, however, about General Electric’s standing to raise this question in an appeal from an attorney fee award that followed settlement and dismissal of the case in chief. I do not believe “that a pending claim for attorneys’ fees, standing alone, could require (or entitle) a federal court to adjudicate the merits of a dispute which in other respects was no longer live.” Friends of Keeseville, Inc. v. F.E.R.C., 859 F.2d 230, 233 n. 7 (D.C.Cir. 1988).
It is true, as General Electric points out in response to the relators’ argument on this issue, that on March 16, 1992, the United States itself filed an amended complaint in the action. This the United States unquestionably had a right to do. It is also true, however, that on April 28, 1992 — subsequent to the filing of the government’s amended complaint — General Electric moved to dismiss the action for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, without prejudice to reinstitution by the United States. One of the reasons for dismissal advanced in General Electric’s motion was this:
“The qui tam provisions of the False Claims Act are unconstitutional. By allowing relators to institute claims on behalf of the United States, the statute impermissi-bly interferes with the Executive Branch’s duty to prosecute claims on behalf of the United States and therefore violates the Constitution’s principle of separation of powers. Furthermore, by allowing rela-tors to conduct litigation on behalf of the United States as executive “officers” although they have not been appointed by the President, a court, or a head of a department, the statute violates the Appointments Clause of the Constitution. U.S. Const, art. II, § 2, cl. 2.”
The April 28 motion to dismiss was still pending on July 23, 1992, when, pursuant to a settlement agreement, the district court entered its order dismissing the case with prejudice. The dismissal probably rendered the constitutional question moot, and I doubt that we ought to decide it now.