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From Guns That Do Not Shoot To Foreign Staplers: Has The Supreme Court's Materiality Standard Under Escobar Provided Clarity For The Health Care Industry About Fraud Under The False Claims Act?, Deborah R. Farringer

Law Faculty Scholarship

As federal district courts and courts of appeals attempt to apply the Supreme Court’s dictates in Universal Health Services, Inc. v. U.S. ex rel. Escobar, it is necessary to ask whether the Court succeeded in easing the complexity of this aspect of the Federal Claims Act (FCA). Have lower courts been able to consistently apply the new standards to assess materiality? Or, has the opinion, which arguably both broadened and narrowed application of the implied false certificate theory and when liability might attach, further muddied the waters for courts and parties attempting to determine whether behavior is of the sort …