## Facts

- A U.S. senator employed an administrative assistant as a salaried Senate staff member and, under a Senate rule then in effect, filed a designation authorizing the assistant to handle the senator’s campaign funds.
- A private relator filed a qui tam action under the False Claims Act (FCA), alleging the assistant worked “extensively and exclusively” on the senator’s reelection campaign while continuing to receive a federal salary for Senate duties.
- The relator alleged the senator knew of the assistant’s campaign activity yet authorized continued salary payments, making those payments false or fraudulent claims on the United States (Count I).
- The relator also alleged, more generally, that other Senate staff on the senator’s payroll performed personal services for the senator and the senator’s family while receiving government salaries (Count II).
- The district court dismissed Count I for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction and dismissed Count II for failure to plead fraud with particularity; the relator appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether the FCA authorizes a qui tam action premised on alleged misuse of a Senate employee’s paid staff time for campaign work, given separation-of-powers concerns and the absence of judicially manageable standards (Count I).
2. Whether allegations that unnamed Senate staff performed unspecified personal services while drawing federal salaries satisfy Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 9(b)’s particularity requirement for fraud-based FCA claims (Count II).

## Decision

- The D.C. Circuit affirmed dismissal of both counts.
- As to Count I, the court held the FCA did not empower federal courts to adjudicate a claim requiring judicial policing of a senator’s allocation of staff time between official duties and campaign activity.
- The court emphasized that Senate rules and internal guidance left substantial discretion (e.g., “best judgment” so long as Senate duties were not neglected), leaving no workable standard for courts to apply under the FCA.
- The court also noted that the government already possessed the core information concerning the alleged conduct, weakening the typical informational justification for a qui tam suit.
- As to Count II, the court held the complaint’s allegations were too general and vague to satisfy Rule 9(b), because they did not identify which staff members, what personal services, when they occurred, or how they resulted in particular false salary claims.

## Legal Principles

- The FCA is not a general mechanism for judicial supervision of internal legislative-branch staffing practices where adjudication would require nonjusticiable judgments and lacks judicially manageable standards.
- Courts will not extend FCA coverage to claims that effectively require enforcing contested internal legislative norms about campaign-related use of staff time absent clear, enforceable statutory standards.
- FCA claims sounding in fraud must satisfy Rule 9(b) by pleading the circumstances of the alleged fraud with particularity, including the who, what, when, and how of the false claim.
- Generalized allegations of misuse of government salaries, without identification of actors, conduct, dates, and linkage to specific claims for payment, are insufficient.

## Conclusion

The court affirmed dismissal of a qui tam FCA action alleging that Senate staff performed campaign and personal work while receiving federal salaries, holding that the campaign-work theory was not judicially administrable under the FCA and that the personal-services theory failed Rule 9(b) for lack of particularized fraud allegations.


United States ex rel. Joseph v. Cannon, 642 F.2d 1373 (D.C. Cir. 1981)