Morsell v. Symantec Corporation, Civil Action No. 2012-0800

Lori Morsell brought a qui tam action against Symantec (now Gen Digital, Inc.) in 2012, alleging False Claims Act violations related to a GSA Master Award Schedule (MAS) contract.
The central allegation was that Symantec did not disclose non-standard discounts and rebates to GSA, impacting the government’s ability to negotiate fair pricing.
The United States, California, and Florida intervened; the case went to a bench trial in 2022.
The court initially awarded partial damages and penalties to the United States and California, later amending those figures upwards after granting in part a government motion for reconsideration.
Symantec moved to further amend and supplement the amended findings, arguing certain sales were improperly included in the damages and penalty calculations, but the court denied this motion.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Inclusion of "open market" sales in damages/penalty calculations	Only sales under the GSA contract were included; identified by Symantec’s own data	Sales lacking GSA MSRP were actually open market sales and should be excluded	Court found Symantec’s coding and the expert’s process persuasive; motion denied
Inclusion of sales predating contract formation	Sales were coded as GSA sales and may have been booked/completed post-contract	Sales before contract should not factor into damages or penalties	Any minor inclusion was not clear error or manifest injustice
Methodology for calculating rebate damages	3% rebate should apply to total GSA contract sales, conservatively estimated	Rebates should only apply to proper subset, not inflated by ineligible sales	Court upheld government’s approach and found no manifest injustice
Calculation of civil penalties for false claims	Every claim under the contract was false due to undisclosed rebates	Only a subset of claims should be penalized (excluding open market/pre-contract)	Court upheld penalties for all identified claims

Ashraf–Hassan v. Embassy of France, 185 F. Supp. 3d 94 (D.D.C. 2016) (elaborates Rule 52(b) standard for correcting manifest errors of law or fact)
Leidos, Inc. v. Hellenic Republic, 881 F.3d 213 (D.C. Cir. 2018) (discusses Rule 59(e) circumstances: change in law, new evidence, clear error, or manifest injustice)
Smith v. Lynch, 115 F. Supp. 3d 5 (D.D.C. 2015) (sets out the high standard for showing clear error on reconsideration)
Anyanwutaku v. Moore, 151 F.3d 1053 (D.C. Cir. 1998) (Rule 59(e) relief only for extraordinary circumstances)