Seventh Circuit: U.S. ex rel. Berkowitz v. Automation Aids Inc.
This brief argued in favor of reversal of the District Court for the Northern District of Illinois’s ruling granting the defendant’s motion to dismiss for failure to plead with the requisite particularity under Rule 9(b). The district court found that the relator’s claims failed because he did not allege that a single person within each defendant corporation had knowledge of all of the details of the fraud and the submission for the false claims. The brief argued that the FCA’s knowledge requirement does not require that one corporate actor possessed knowledge of all of the elements of the fraud scheme, and that collective knowledge of corporate employees can establish a knowing false claim by that corporation. The brief also discussed generally the FCA’s knowledge requirements.
