One District Court Finds Limits To Express Certification

We have previously written about recent challenges to the "implied certification" theory of the False Claims Act. One district court has also recently addressed express certification. In an express certification case, plaintiffs allege that as a condition of receiving funds from the government, defendants were required to explicitly certify compliance with certain enumerated statutes, regulations or contracts. These cases typically involve less pleading-stage litigation about the viability of the relator's legal theory of falsity under the FCA. Rather, the dispute in such cases is more often whether defendants' certifications were actually false, that is, defendants will challenge plaintiffs' contentions that they failed to comply with whichever legal obligations with which they expressly certified compliance.