Laraway

A private person may bring a qui tam action under the False Claims Act (Gov. Code, § 12650 et seq.) on behalf of a political subdivision of the state. The political subdivision may intervene in the false claims action and assume primary responsibility for prosecution of the action. After intervening in the action, the political subdivision may move to dismiss the action for good cause. In this case, the trial court granted the intervening political subdivision’s motion to dismiss, over the objection of the qui tam plaintiff. The qui tam plaintiff appeals. We hold that good cause to dismiss a false claims action on motion of an intervening political subdivision may be any reason rationally related to a legitimate government purpose. We review the trial court’s finding of good cause for abuse of discretion. We conclude the trial court did not abuse its discretion in dismissing the False Claims Act causes of action. The complaint, however, included taxpayer causes of action under Code of Civil Procedure section 526a for injunctive and declaratory relief, which the trial court also dismissed. We conclude these causes of action were not the proper subjects of a False Claims…