Whether a court may create an exception to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 9(b)'s particularity requirement when the plaintiff claims that only the defendant possesses the information needed to satisfy that requirement

QUESTIONS PRESENTED The False Claims Act (“FCA”) imposes punitive civil liability for submitting false claims to the government. Under the FCA’s qui tam provisions, selfappointed private relators prosecute actions for the United States and share in any recovery. Relators file more than 600 such cases annually. The government may intervene, but if it declines—as happens 80% of the time—the relator prosecutes the law. A self-appointed relator has prosecuted this FCA case for more than six years. The district court dismissed the complaint under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 9(b), which requires a party pleading a fraud claim to “state with particularity the circumstances constituting fraud.” The Tenth Circuit below reversed. It “excuse[d]” the relator’s pleading deficiencies because the relator argued that only the petitioners had possession of the details that Rule 9(b) requires. And although petitioners asserted an Appointments Clause challenge to the FCA’s qui tam provisions below, circuit precedent foreclosed that challenge. The questions presented are: 1. Whether a court may create an exception to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 9(b)’s particularity requirement when the plaintiff claims that only the defendant possesses the information needed to satisfy that requirement. 2. Whether the False Claims Act’s qui tam provisions violate the Appointments Clause of Article II of the Constitution.