Louis Berger Defeats Manager’s False Claims Retaliation Suit

A project manager failed to show that Louis Berger Inc. violated the False Claims Act by firing him in retaliation for calling attention to alleged timesheet misconduct under a construction project performed at Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina, a federal district court said.

Dennis A. Leverette asserted that the emails he sent to supervisors about allegedly improper billing were acts to prevent fraud on the federal government.

But the emails, which didn’t use words like illegal or false, pertained to internal timekeeping processes as opposed to attempting to stop misconduct under the FCA, Judge Sherri A. Lydon of ...