Recent Annual Reports On FCA And Bid Protest Activity

Although this blog focuses on numerous issues of interest to the Government contracts community, two types of disputes that get significant attention here are False Claims Act lawsuits and bid protests. Recently, DOJ and GAO issued their annual reports on the volume of activity with respect to such cases, and although these reports are a few weeks old, we wanted to briefly summarize the reports.

With respect to FCA cases, DOJ's headline explains that the Government recovered "nearly $6 billion from False Claims Act cases in fiscal year 2014"—which was the "first annual recovery to exceed $5 billion." The amount of money taken in under the the FCA was swollen by recoveries from financial institutions "in the wake of the housing and mortgage crisis." But the increase is consistent with a three-year trend during which DOJ has "achieved the three largest annual recoveries ever recorded under the statute." Notably, there was a slight decrease in the number of qui tam compl