Can a Person File More Than One Whistleblower Case?

Many people want to know if a person can file more than one whistleblower case. Yes, you can file more than one case, you just have to, in fact, have more than one case. You can’t file with more than one case if you don’t have more than one case, but several people have filed more than one case because they might have had, for example, information on different contractors in different times doing similar types of wrongful acts.

It’s not hard to imagine if you’re a particular type of employee and you go from one company to another and both companies are doing the same awful fraudulent activity that you might have,  more than one case. Its also not hard to imagine a scenario under which you could file more than one kind of action based on the same bad actors conduct. For example, you could have a False Claims Act case because an organization is ripping off the government, and they could also end up being sold as a security to other people and to investors. So it’s entirely possible that something along those lines could wind up being a False Claims Act case and also constitute securities fraud.

In that way, it could be possible and it may be necessary, or at least a good idea,  to file two kinds of cases involving different allegations but coming out of the same set of practices. So it’s certainly possible to have more than one kind of case.

Filing with Another Party

You can file a case with somebody else. There’s no prohibition in filing a case as a co-relator. It may be best if two relators each have about half the story, and they can get together and work together. That can be very beneficial to a case. So, there’s certainly no problem with doing that at least initially, so long as everybody is on the same page and agrees that they can work together. Obviously, the two people filing together have to agree that they have no conflict with each other.

Necessary Information to File a Case

You need information with regard to fraud that you have that hopefully, other people don’t have yet. The more you know that the whole world doesn’t know, the stronger position you usually are in to file a case.

There’s something called a public disclosure bar under the Federal False Claims Act that says that if the information is publicly available, you can’t file a case unless you are an original source of the information. Being an original source of the information is a highly technical part of the law, but at the end of the day the more information that you have from the inside about how the fraud was committed, the better the case, and the better position you are to file a case.

Seeking Help With Filing More Than One Whistleblower Case

Obviously, you also want the information to involve a serious matter of fraud. This is not a law that should be used frivolously—it has to involve something that rises to the level of fraud under the False Claims Act. For assistance with filing more than one whistleblower case, call a dedicated Washington DC attorney today.