United States ex rel. Shea v. Cellco Partnership

Case Updates

The D.C. Circuit held that the first-to-file bar is to be applied at the time of filing. Accordingly, an FCA claim that relates to a pending claim at the time of filing must be dismissed even if the related case has been resolved by the time of decision.

The U.S. Chamber filed an amicus brief urging the D.C. Circuit to uphold the district court’s judgment that a relator’s claims in a qui tam suit were prevented by the first-to-file bar. In addition, the Chamber asked the court to reverse the district court’s decision that the relator’s claims were not barred by the public disclosure bar. The brief explained that both of these bars reflect Congress’s deliberate choice to prevent duplicative qui tam suits. Further, the Chamber argued that the first-to-file and public disclosure bars are necessary to weeding out these superfluous claims, which fail to provide the government with any new information and are almost always meritless.

John P. Elwood, Craig D. Margolis, Jeremy C. Marwell, Christian D. Sheehan and Ralph C. Mayrell of Vinson & Elkins LLP served as counsel for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on behalf of the U.S. Chamber Litigation Center.