John D. King v. United States Government , 878 F.3d 1265 ( 2018 )

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[PUBLISH]
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
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No. 15-12031
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D.C. Docket No. 6:14-cv-01171-SDM-EAJ
JOHN D. KING,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
versus
UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT,
Defendant-Appellee.
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Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Middle District of Florida
_______________________
(January 3, 2018)
Before WILLIAM PRYOR, JILL PRYOR and ANDERSON, Circuit Judges.
WILLIAM PRYOR, Circuit Judge:
This appeal requires us to decide whether a provision of the False Claims
Act, 31 U.S.C. § 3730, waives the sovereign immunity of the United States. In
2008, John King filed a qui tam action under the Act that the district court
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dismissed because King committed discovery violations. In 2014, King filed a
complaint for money damages against the United States on the ground that the
government had secretly settled the violations he identified in his original action.
The district court dismissed his complaint as barred by sovereign immunity. We
affirm.
I. BACKGROUND
In 2008, King filed a qui tam action as a relator on behalf of the United
States. In that action, King alleged that several defendant corporations violated the
False Claims Act. The government did not intervene. Later, the district court
dismissed the action with prejudice because of King’s discovery violations. And
we summarily affirmed this dismissal.
After his qui tam action was dismissed, King filed this suit against the
United States. He alleges that the government conducted an investigation of the
fraud he identified and covertly settled with the defendants in his qui tam action
before its dismissal. King seeks a share of an alleged settlement of more than $7.5
million paid to the government. He argues that this allegedly covert settlement
violated his rights under section 3730(c)(5) of the False Claims Act, which
provides that, when the government purses an “alternate remedy,” “the person
initiating the action shall have the same rights in such proceeding as such person
would have had if the action had continued under this section.” 31 U.S.C.
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§ 3730(c)(5). The government responds that it filed a declaration in King’s original
qui tam action to explain that the government had investigated the allegations in
King’s complaint and that, after the investigation, it invoked its contractual rights
with the defendants in the qui tam action and settled for “the amount of the costs
that the United States had incurred in its investigation.”
The district court dismissed King’s complaint as barred by sovereign
immunity. It concluded that King’s argument that the government waived its
immunity relied only on sections 3730(c)(5) and (d)(1) and that neither section
contains an express waiver of sovereign immunity.
II. STANDARD OF REVIEW
“We review de novo the district court’s dismissal of a complaint for
sovereign immunity.” Contour Spa at the Hard Rock, Inc. v. Seminole Tribe of
Fla., 692 F.3d 1200, 1203 (11th Cir. 2012) (italics added) (quoting Sanderlin v.
Seminole Tribe of Fla., 243 F.3d 1282, 1285 (11th Cir. 2001)). “[W]e take as true
the facts as alleged in [the] complaint . . . .” Id. at 1201. And “we read briefs filed
by pro se litigants liberally . . . .” Timson v. Sampson, 518 F.3d 870, 874 (11th Cir.
2008).
III. DISCUSSION
King wants to sue a different kind of king, but we are “heirs to a system in
which the sovereign, the king, was not amenable to suit.” Antonin Scalia & Bryan
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A. Garner, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts 281 (2012). “Absent a
waiver, sovereign immunity shields the Federal Government and its agencies from
suit.” Fed. Deposit Ins. Corp. v. Meyer, 510 U.S. 471, 475 (1994). “Waivers of the
Government’s sovereign immunity, to be effective, must be unequivocally
expressed.” United States v. Nordic Village, Inc., 503 U.S. 30, 33 (1992) (internal
quotation marks omitted); see also City of Jacksonville v. Dep’t of Navy, 348 F.3d
1307, 1314 (11th Cir. 2003). In other words, a waiver of sovereign immunity
“cannot be implied.” Franconia Assocs. v. United States, 536 U.S. 129, 141 (2002)
(internal quotation marks omitted); see also Scalia & Garner, supra, at 281 (“A
statute does not waive sovereign immunity . . . unless that disposition is
unequivocally clear.”).
Section 3730, which addresses “[c]ivil actions for false claims,” provides no
express waiver of the sovereign immunity of the United States for a collateral
attack on a settlement between the government and a qui tam defendant. 31 U.S.C.
§ 3730. King’s complaint alleged a violation of section 3730(c)(5). But that
provision, known as the alternate remedies clause, enables the government to elect
to purse an alternate remedy, notwithstanding the earlier filing of a relator’s suit
about the same claim. And it provides the relator “the same rights” in that alternate
proceeding as the relator would have had in the original suit. 31 U.S.C.
§ 3730(c)(5). This section does not permit a relator to sue the government for
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money damages after his qui tam suit has been dismissed due to his own discovery
violations and after the government has successfully obtained an alternate remedy.
Likewise, section 3730(d) specifies when a court shall award a relator a portion of
“the proceeds of the action or settlement of the claim” and “an amount for
reasonable expenses,” “attorneys’ fees[,] and costs . . . against the defendant.” 31
U.S.C. § 3730(d). That section says nothing about a complaint filed against the
government by a relator whose qui tam action was dismissed for a discovery
violation after the government obtained a settlement. It does not expressly waive
sovereign immunity from that kind of collateral attack.
IV. CONCLUSION
We AFFIRM the dismissal of King’s complaint.
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