MEMORANDUM AND ORDER
Relators John Fallon, Robert Bradley, Jr., Pamela Carr, Kris Sheridan, Kelly Fallon and Atlantic States Legal Foundation commenced this action on behalf of the United States pursuant 31 U.S.C. § 3730(b) alleging that defendants knowingly made false claims for contract payments in violation of 31 U.S.C. § 3729(a)(1), (2) and (3). The matter is presently before the Court on defendants motion to dismiss one of plaintiffs’ claims.
A complaint should be dismissed for failure to state a claim only if it appears beyond a reasonable doubt that the plaintiff can prove no set of facts in support of the claim which would entitle the plaintiff to relief.
Conley v. Gibson,
FACTS
The following is a summary of the relevant allegations of relators second amended complaint which are accepted as true for purposes of this motion.
*638 Accudyne is and has been party to numerous contracts with the United States Department of Defense. Each such contract included a requirement that all work be performed in accordanсe with applicable federal, state and local environmental laws and regulations including the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.
To оbtain the contracts Accudyne submitted pricing information to the United States Department of Defense which falsely represented that Accudyne’s cost to complete the contracts fоr which it bid would include all costs associated with environmental compliance. After being awarded the contracts Accudyne knowingly failed to comply with environmental requirements while performing thеm.
Accudyne then knowingly presented false representations, certifications and claims that it complied with the contractually incorporated environmental regulations in order to inducе payment under the contracts. The Department of Defense relied upon the false representations and paid the contract claims.
MEMORANDUM
Defendants characterize relators claim as an effort to impose liability based solely on noncomplianee with environmental statutes. This, they argue is not a claim within the language of the False Claims Act. Alternatively, to the extent that rеlators do state a claim defendants argue that it is pre-empted by the more specific remedial provisions of the environmental laws under the doctrine set forth in
Middlesex County Sewerage Authority v. National Sea Clammers Assoc.,
Scope of the FCA
The broad objective of the False Claims Act is to provide a remedy for all fraudulent attempts to cause the government to pay sums of money.
United States v. Neifert-White Co.,
Any person who—
(1) knowingly presents, or causes to be presented, to an officer or employee of the United States government or a member of the Armed Forces of the United States a false or fraudulent claim for payment or approval;
(2) knowingly makes, uses, or causes to be made or used, a false record or statement to get a false or fraudulent claim paid or approved by the government;
(3) conspires to defraud the government by getting a false or fraudulent claim allowed or paid; ...
is liable to the United States government for a civil penalty of not less than $5000 and not more than $10,000 plus three times the amount damages which the government sustained because of the act of that person....
The allegations of the second amended complaint unquestionably fall within this language. The complaint alleges that the contracts expressly required compliance with environmental regulations and that defendant knowingly failed to comply with such rеgulations and falsely certified that it had so complied in order to induce payments under the contracts. Such a claim is fundamentally no different than falsely representing that tests have been performed or falsely representing the results of product testing.
See, e.g. Neal v. Honeywell Inc.,
Defendants rely upon dicta in Neal discussing costs to the government which might result from a proliferation of FCA retaliation actions. In so doing, defendants ignore the more fundamental principle at the heart of Neal:
But the Supreme Court insists that we take statutes seriously, bending their lan *639 guage only when the text produces absurd results.
# * * * *
The text of thе law is not just evidence about how much one interest ... should be preferred over another; the text is the decision about what to do — a decision approved by the Constitution’s own means, bi-cameral approval and presidential signature. No principle of statutory construction says that after identifying the statutes accommodation of competing interests, the Court should give a favored pаrty a little extra.
Pre-emptive effect of environmental laws
Notwithstanding that a claim falls within the literal reading of a statute, it is sometimes held to be unavailable becаuse another more detailed statute evidences Congressional intent to pre-empt the more general claim which relates to conduct for which the other statute provides a detаiled remedy.
Sea Clammers,
But neither
Brown
nor
Sea Clam-mers
hold that a statutory claim is preempted by a subsequent statutory enactment which regulates conduct different from that supporting the original claim. Both
Brown
and
Sea Clammers
held that a section 1983 action сould not be maintained where another statute provided detailed remedies for the same underlying conduct. This analysis is powerful when applied to a claim under section 1983 because it is not a source of substantive rights but merely provides a method for vindicating federal rights conferred by other statutes.
Albright v. Oliver,
— U.S. -, -,
This reasoning cannot readily be extended to the present case because the FCA and environmental statutes provide remedies for entirely different conduct. The first is a remedy for defrauding the government, thе second for polluting. It can hardly be inferred that Congress intended to deprive the United States of a remedy for contract fraud by creating a remedy for environmental degradation. The absurd impliсation of such reasoning is that Congress authorizes suits for fraud on the government where a contractor lies about lawful actions but precludes actions for lies concerning unlawful actions.
Furthermore, the remedies for the two actions are entirely different. An action under the FCA cannot compel an environmental clean-up or yield damages for environmental contamination. Neither can a suit under federal environmental statutes obtain fraud damages or statutory penalties for defrauding the government. Both the actions that give rise to the claims and the remedies they prоvide are distinct.
The Sea Clammers doctrine logically applies to preclude claims based upon fraudulent federal income tax filings. Since such fraud is directly addressed and remedied by the Internal Revenue Cоde it follows that Congress would not intend to duplicate those remedies with an FCA claim arising from the identical conduct. Not surprisingly, such claims are now expressly excluded from application of the FCA. 31 U.S.C. § 3729(e). For the obvious reasons stated herein, Congress did not extend such an exclusion to environmental or other claims which provide remedies for proscribed conduct other than fraud on the government.
Courts have been generally reluctant to find pre-emption of the False Claims Act even where other laws provide closely related regulation and remedies. In
United States v. General Dynamics Corp.,
“The ruling in [Connecticut National Bank v.] Germain [503 U.S. 249 ,112 S.Ct. 1146 ,117 L.Ed.2d 391 (1992) ] is consistent with well established jurisprudence that strongly disfavors pre-emption of federal statutory law by another federal statute absent expressed mаnifestations of a preemptive intent. It is, of course, a cardinal principle of statutory construction that repeals by implication are not favored.”
Id. at 774. Accordingly, although the receipt of kickbacks addressed by the AKA was precisely the conduct which supported the FCA claim, the Court rejected a claim of preemption noting that other courts “have allowed thе United States to seek recovery for kickbacks under the FCA or common law, without finding any preclusion of these remedies by the AKA.” Id. at 776.
Similarly, in
United States v. Foster Wheeler Corp.,
The allegations of the complaint fall within the plain language of the FCA and the Sea Clammers doctrine is inapplicable.
Accordingly,
ORDER
IT IS ORDERED that defendants motion to dismiss is DENIED.