Judge Denies Move to Dismiss Auction Case Against Dish
U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly for the District of Columbia Thursday denied a motion by Dish Network designated entities Northstar Wireless and SNR Wireless for judgment based on the pleadings in a case examining Vermont National Telephone and DOJ allegations…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
of fraud in the 2015 AWS-3 auction. “These allegations were exhaustively litigated before the FCC in an antecedent administrative proceeding and in the court of public opinion,” the court said. "As a result, Defendants argue that the Court should dismiss this case pursuant to the False Claim Act’s ‘public-disclosure’ provision, which requires a Court to dismiss a qui tam action where the fraud allegations were known to the federal government in advance of a relator’s commencement of suit in federal court.” But that provision “is subject to a crucial and dispositive exception: where the United States opposes dismissal,” Kollar-Kotelly said. In this the government “opposes dismissal of all claims, vitiating Defendants’ reliance on the FCA’s ‘public-disclosure’ provision,” she said. Qui tam actions allow private individuals to sue on behalf of the government to recover money that was fraudulently obtained by a person or corporation.