Health care fraud in the United States is policed in a unique enforcement landscape. The False Claims Act, one major piece of that landscape, grants private citizen whistleblowers the ability to sue on behalf of the government to remedy fraud. Plaintiffs in these qui tam actions are subject to procedural requirements characteristic of any federal civil fraud lawsuit, including the rigid pleading standard of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 9(b). The Supreme Court has repeatedly declined to resolve a circuit split as to the precise particularity of the claim required under the rule; some circuits require a representative sample of false claims for a complaint to survive a motion to dismiss, while others relax the requirement and hold that general allegations supporting a strong inference of fraud will suffice. Ample literature exists in support of the latter, more lenient approach to evaluating a complaint, but little, if any, explores the possibility that a resolution outside the existing dichotomy could optimize results in the health care fraud qui tam context.
This Comment explores one such solution: pre‐merits “particularity discovery” designed to allow a qui tam plaintiff to plead a representative sample of false claims in her complaint. By exploring the merits and shortfalls of the particularity requirement as it applies to False Claims Act qui tam plaintiffs, this Comment first suggests that health care fraud cases may warrant special considerations at the pleadings stage. Then, this Comment uses examples of pre‐merits discovery in other contexts, namely class certification and jurisdictional disputes, to illustrate relevant, albeit imperfect, blueprints for a particularity discovery procedure. Finally, this Comment proposes a framework for ruling on a qui tam plaintiff’s motion for particularity discovery that could operate within the district court’s existing discretion. Because of the importance of remedying health care fraud, this middle ground could provide opportunities for plaintiffs to bring meritorious claims to court without sacrificing the benefits and purpose of the particularity requirement. This Comment will hopefully encourage courts to consider adopting the more rigid representative sample standard for particularity pleading, recognizing that the addition of targeted particularity discovery to the procedure creates a viable middle ground between the two existing approaches to pleading.