“Samuel Johnson would have had little patience for this case,” writes the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in a recent False Claims Act case, United States ex rel. Wall v. Circle C Construction. “Johnson once responded to the metaphysics of George Berkeley … by kicking a large stone and declaring, ‘I refute it thus.’ One can do rather the same thing with the government’s theory here.”
What got the court so worked up? Circle C Construction, a contractor that built warehouses for the U.S. Army, underpaid a few electricians by $9,900 less than what was required under federal law. The government sought (and got) damages of $763,000 as a remedy for the underpayment, theorizing that all the work was “tainted” by the mistake.
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