Carlos Shurick sued The Boeing Company, his former employer, in federal court under the False Claims Act. He also sued
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Boeing in state court under the Florida Whistleblower Act. We must decide whether a final judgment in the former action precludes further litigation of the whistleblower claim here. In accordance with our decision in
Ragsdale v. Rubbermaid, Inc.,
I
Carlos Shurick’s job with Boeing occasionally required him to wear a protective respirator. But whеn he grew frustrated with Boeing’s failure to supply a respirator that accommodated his eyeglasses, he refused to submit to further respiratоr-fit testing, and Boeing fired him. In response, Shurick filed two lawsuits. First, he sued Boeing in federal court as a qui tam relator on behalf of the United States, alleging that the company had submittеd false claims to the Government for services rendered in violation of federal safety regulations. See 31 U.S.C. §§ 3729(a), 3730(b). Second, he sued Boеing in state court under the Florida Whistleblower Act, Fla. Stat. § 448.102, alleging that the company had fired him for complaining about its safety violations.
Boeing removed the whistleblower suit to federal court on the basis of diversity jurisdiction,
1
and both actions proceeded— separately — befоre the same district judge. In 2008, Boeing prevailed on a motion to dismiss the qui
tam
action with prejudice, and we affirmed the district court’s judgment.
United States ex rel. Shurick v. Boeing Co.,
II
The district court granted Boeing’s motion for summary judgment on the merits after concluding that Shurick had not engaged in activity protected by the Whistleblower Act. But although Boeing noted the dismissal of the qui tam action in its motion for summary judgment, neither the company nor the district court considered whether that dismissal might have any preclusive effect. We therefore requested supplemental briefing on the question and turn now to the substance of the issue. 2
The doctrine of claim preclusion (or
res judicata)
bars the parties to an action from relitigating matters that were or could have been litigated in an earlier suit. The doctrine facilitates “the conclusive resolution of disputes” by reducing “thе expense and vexation attending multiple lawsuits, conserving] judicial resources, and fostering] reliance on judicial action by minimizing the possibility of inconsistent decisions.”
Montana v. United States,
The parties here agree only that the district court had jurisdiction over the qui tam action. Although Boeing contends that the other requirements for claim preclusion have been met as well, Shurick argues that his whistleblower suit implicates different parties and a different cause of action than the qui tam suit. In addition, he stresses that no final judgment issued in the qui tam action until after he had filed his whistleblower suit in state court.
Shurick’s argument concerning the identity оf the parties is that the
qui tam
action involved an additional defendant who is not a party to this litigation. But claim preclusion operates to prevent parties “from contesting matters that they have had a full and fair opportunity to litigate” between themselves,
Montana,
Nor are we are convinced by Shurick’s argument that the two lawsuits involve different causes of action. In Ragsdale v. Rubbermaid, we considered an аppeal from the dismissal of a federal whistle-blower claim under the False Claims Act, 31 U.S.C. § 3730(h). Like Shurick, the plaintiff there had previously filed a separate qui tam action on behalf of the United States. In holding that a settlement in the qui tam litigation precluded the plaintiffs subsequent whistleblower claim, we readily concluded that the claims involved the same cause of action:
[Because] both [the plaintiffs] claim for retaliatory discharge under the FCA and his FCA qui tam claim arose from the same nucleus of operative fact, we conclude that the cause of action in Rubbermaid I and the cause of action in Rubbermaid II are the same for purposes of res judicata.
Shurick tries to distinguish
Rubbermaid,
but none of his distinctions are persuаsive. First, he notes that his whistleblower claim arose under Florida law instead of the False Claims Act. Yet the differences between the two, for our purposes, are purely cosmetic. What mattered in
Rubbermaid
was that “Rubbermaid [had] engaged in illegal conductf,] and [the plaintiffs] discovery of thаt conduct led to his discharge!:] a series of transactions closely related in time, space, and origin.”
Shurick’s strongest argument is that he, unlike the
Rubbermaid
plaintiff, pursued his claims concurrently rather than sequentially.
3
In other words, because he filed his lawsuits at the same time, Shurick аrgues that he avoided the “textbook res judicata” situation we considered in
Rubbermaid,
where our primary concern was
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preventing
qui tarn
plaintiffs from strategically severing their claims “in the hope of obtaining a second bite at the apple should their first action prove unsuccessful.”
The problem with this argument is that it misconstrues the claim-рreclusion doctrine’s final-judgment requirement. Although “a judgment is only conclusive regarding the matters that the parties might have litigated ..., for res judicatа purposes, claims that could have been brought are claims in existence at the time the original complaint [was] filed.”
Pleming v. Universal-Rundle Corp.,
Having thus concluded that all the requirements for claim preclusion have been met, we AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.
Notes
. See 28 U.S.C. §§ 1332, 1441.
. Although Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(c) classifies claim preclusion as an affirmative defense, “[d]ismissal by the court sua sponte on res judicatа grounds ... is permissible in the interest of judicial economy where both actions were brought before the same court.”
Boone v. Kurtz,
. Shurick also observes that he filed his lawsuits in different courts, a fact of no consequence here.
Cf. Marrese v. Am. Acad. of Orthopaedic Surgeons,