When there is wrongdoing in a government agency or by a government contractor, it often only comes to light because of an employee or other person involved in the situation being willing to shed a light on the illegal actions. When this happens, the person may be able to personally share in any money that is recovered. To do so, the cases must be the subject of qui tam lawsuits.
Wrongdoing in the government is covered by the False Claims Act. This law allows government employees and others to act as whistleblowers by shining a light on attempts to defraud the government, either by employees or private contractors. It is the primary law the government has to battle fraud in its contract process. The law basically has two components. For those charged under the False Claims Act, they can be subject to civil penalties of $5,500 to $11,000 for each instance of fraud and they also can be responsible to have to pay triple any damages awarded in court. For example, if a court awarded the government a $1 million damage claim against a contractor, that contractor would actually be liable to pay $3 million.
The second part of the Act is a whistleblower policy relating to the damages awarded in court. It allows people in whistleblower cases to receive 15% to 30% of the amount recovered by the government. Lawsuits in which there is a whistleblower involved who brought the wrongdoing to light and who receives a portion of the damages are what are referred to as qui tam lawsuits.
While being a whistleblower may sound noble, those who do bring to light government wrongdoing often face a tough road. Whistleblower retaliation cases are fairly common, with nearly one-fourth of people acting as whistleblowers saying they have experienced retaliation because of their actions. This can be unofficial retaliation, such as being treated poorly, or it can involve official retaliation, such as being demoted or fired. Though there are whistleblower protections in place to try to prevent such cases of retaliation from happening, they don’t always work, and they can’t really be applied to cases where the retaliation is unofficial and done by coworkers rather than superiors.