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Implied Certification Under The False Claims Act, Gregory Klass, Michael Holt

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The False Claims Act prohibits fraud by government contractors, including a contractor's false certification of compliance with the contract, statutes or regulations. In the early 1990s, some courts began holding that the act of requesting payment from the government implicitly represents such compliance for the purposes the FCA. Circuits are today split on the implied certification doctrine. This Article provides a theory of implied certification, suggests how the circuit split should be resolved and describes how contracting agencies should write contracts in light of the existing rule. There are good reasons for the implied certification rule: it is an information-forcing …