No Ruling on Law for Whistle-Blowers
A federal judge in Los Angeles declined Monday to rule immediately on a constitutional challenge to a federal whistle-blower law, which allows private citizens with knowledge of fraud against the government to file lawsuits on behalf of the government.
U.S. District Judge William D. Keller called the False Claims Act “a very extensive, very carefully crafted statute,” but issued no final ruling and expressed no opinion on several points of legal attack.
McDonnell Douglas Corp. and Parker Hannifin Corp., the subjects of a whistle-blower lawsuit alleging $175 million in overcharges on the Apache helicopter program, have asserted that the statute is unconstitutional and allows private citizens to sue on behalf of the government when they have no legal standing to do so.
“The private individual comes in and assumes the mantle of the nation to prosecute these actions; no control, no accountability, no nothing,” complained McDonnell Douglas lawyer Robert F. Scoular.
Assistant Senate Legal Counsel Morgan Frankel told the judge that dozens of similar statutes have been upheld.
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