768
Opinion of the Court
contains a provision expressly defining "person," "[f]or purposes of this section," to include States, § 3733(l)(4).13 The
presence of such a definitional provision in § 3733, together with the absence of such a provision from the definitional provisions contained in § 3729, see §§ 3729(b)-(c), suggests that States are not "persons" for purposes of qui tam liability under § 3729.14
Second, the current version of the FCA imposes damages that are essentially punitive in nature, which would be in-13 The dissent points out that the definition of "person" in § 3733(l)(4) also applies to § 3733(l)(2), a definitional provision which defines the phrase "false claims law investigation" as "any inquiry conducted by any false claims law investigator for the purpose of ascertaining whether any person is or has been engaged in any violation of a false claims law." See post, at 789, 795. But the effect of assuming a State to be a "person" for purposes of that definitional section is not to embrace investigations of States within the definition. A "false claims investigation" will still not include an investigation of a State, since whether a "person" (however broadly defined) "is or has been engaged in any violation of a false claims law" depends on whether that person is subject to the "false claims law," which refers us back to § 3729, to which § 3733(l)(4)'s definition of "person" is explicitly made inapplicable. What the application of § 3733(l)(4) to § 3733(l)(2) does achieve is to subject States, not to qui tam liability, but to civil investigative demands. That is entirely appropriate, since States will often be able to provide useful evidence in investigations of private contractors.
14 The dissent contends that our argument "prove[s] too much," since the definition of "person" in § 3733(l)(4) includes not just States, but also "any natural person, partnership, corporation, association, or other legal entity"; under our reasoning, it contends, all of those entities would also be excluded from the definition of "person" under § 3729. Post, at 799. That is not so. Unlike States, all of those entities are presumptively covered by the term "person." See 1 U. S. C. § 1. The addition of States to 31 U. S. C. § 3733, and the failure to add States to § 3729, suggests that States are not subject to qui tam liability under § 3729.
The dissent attempts to explain the absence of a definitional provision in § 3729 by suggesting that Congress "simply saw no need to add a definition of 'person' in § 3729 because . . . the meaning of the term 'person' was already well understood." Post, at 799. If that were so, and if the "understanding" included States, there would have been no need to include a definition of "person" in § 3733.
Page: Index Previous 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007