United States ex rel. Advocates for Basic Legal Equality, Inc. v. U.S. Bank, N.A.

Whether, under the public disclosure bar of the False Claims Act, 31 U.S.C. § 3730(e)(4)(A), which prohibits qui tam actions when "substantially the same allegations or transactions" have been publicly disclosed, unless the qui tam plaintiff is an original source of the information, a qui tam action may proceed where it is based on specific allegations of fraud that were not the subject of prior public disclosures and that add substantial material information to the public disclosures, and when the publicly disclosed allegations "encompass" the qui tam allegations only if both sets of allegations are characterized at a very high level of generality. CVSG: 4/14/2017.