Harry Blackmun

“ While the trial court's judgment in these matters often may amount to no more than an approximation, even an approximation will go far towards ensuring both that the Government is fully compensated for the costs of corruption and that, as required by the Double Jeopardy Clause, the defendant is protected from a sanction so disproportionate to the damages caused that it constitutes a second punishment. ”

“ To that end, the determination whether a given civil sanction constitutes punishment in the relevant sense requires a particularized assessment of the penalty imposed and the purposes that the penalty may fairly be said to serve. Simply put, a civil as well as a criminal sanction constitutes punishment when the sanction as applied in the individual case serves the goals of punishment. ”

“ What we announce now is a rule for the rare case, the case such as the one before us, where a fixed-penalty provision subjects a prolific but small-gauge offender to a sanction overwhelmingly disproportionate to the damages he has caused. ”

“ Based on facts established by Halper's criminal conviction and incorporated in the civil suit, the District Court granted summary judgment for the Government on the issue of liability. 660 F.Supp. 531, 532-533 (1987) .
The court then turned its attention to the remedy for Halper's multiple violations. The remedial provision of the Act stated that a person in violation is "liable to the United States Government for a civil penalty of $2,000, an amount equal to 2 times the amount of damages the Government sustains because of the act of that person, and costs of the civil action." ”

“ The defendants challenged the judgment on double jeopardy grounds, arguing, as did the defendant in Mitchell, that the proceeding was barred as a second attempt to punish the defendants criminally. This Court dispensed with this claim of criminal punishment, precisely as it had in Mitchell, by reference to the statute. The Court held that the chief purpose of the statute "was to provide for restitution to the government of money taken from it by fraud, and that the device of double damages plus a specific sum was chosen to make sure that the government would be made completely whole." ”

“ In contrast to the plaintiff in a private-attorney-general action, the private party in a qui tam action brings suit in the name of the United States and shares with the Government any proceeds of the action. 31 U.S.C. § 3730. In Hess, the Court assumed but did not decide that a qui tam action could give rise to double jeopardy. Since this assumption was not essential to the judgment in Hess, we consider the issue unresolved.↑ It hardly seems necessary to state that a suit under the Act alleging one or two false claims would satisfy the rational-relationship requirement. ”

“ Code "9018" was the number for seeking reimbursement for service performed for the first or only patient seen at a private home or Skilled Nursing Facility the provider was required to visit. Code "9019" was the number for seeking reimbursement for service performed for each additional patient seen at the facility. At all relevant times, the allowable reimbursement for service under code "9018" was either $10 or $12. ”

“ Because the defendants in Hess had been punished in a prior criminal proceeding (as Mitchell had not) , the Court faced a further double jeopardy problem: whether (as in the instant case) the second sanction was barred because it constituted a second punishment. Under the qui tam provision of the statute, the Government's share of the recovery was $150,000, id., at 545, 63 S.Ct., at 385, for actual damages of $101,500. ”