by Ben Vernia | March 22nd, 2010
In a March 12 decision in U.S. ex rel. Magee v. Lockheed Martin Corp., et al., U.S. District Judge Halil Suleyman Ozerden of the Southern District of Mississippi denied without elaboration motions by some of the defendants to dismiss the government’s complaint in intervention on Rule 9(b) grounds. He likewise denied a motion to strike allegations that some of the defendants spoliated evidence (by burning documents and destroying a hard drive), reasoning that at the current stage of the case, the allegations failed to satisfy the standards of Rule 12(f) for striking “redundant, immaterial, impertinent, or scandalous matter.” Judge Ozerden did dismiss the relator’s complaint as to those same defendants, however, reasoning that once the U.S. intervened in the case, the relator has no “separate free-standing FCA cause of action.”
