The US Supreme Court Tuesday granted review in US ex rel. Polansky v. Executive Health Resources and Bittner v. US.

In US ex rel. Polansky v. Executive Health Resources, the court will consider whether a fraud case brought by an individual on behalf of the US government can be dismissed by the government. The case first arose when Jesse Polansky claimed private billing company Executive Health Resources fraudulently billed the government for unnecessary inpatient visits.

Polansky filed the claim under the False Claims Act, a federal law that makes it a crime to knowingly make a false claim under a federal healthcare program. Private citizens, like Polansky, can file suit under the False Claims Act on behalf of the government in what is known as a qui tam suit. Normally, the government has 60 days from the time of filing to decide whether they want to intervene and takeover the suit from the private citizen. In this case, the government decided not to pursue the case against Executive Health Resources two years after Polansky filed suit. The case still went forward, but the government later sought to dismiss the case.

Bittner v. US involves a question of whether the failure to file an annual report disclosing foreign bank accounts constitutes a violation of the Bank Secrecy Act. On top of that, the court must determine whether those violations accrue each time an individual account is not reported. The case arose from a conflict between the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Alexandru Bittner, a dual US-Romanian citizen. The IRS fined Bittner $2.72 million after he failed to report his foreign accounts while he lived in Romania. Bittner was fined $10,000 for each unreported bank account from 2007 through 2011.