USA, ex rel. Solano v. Barton Associates, Inc.

── USA, ex rel. Solano v. Barton Associates, Inc. ── Court: Court of Appeals for the First Circuit Date: May 28, 2026 Category: General United States Court of Appeals For the First Circuit No. 25-1309 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, ex rel. REYNALDO SOLANO AND NEALS MAXILIN; STATE OF CALIFORNIA, STATE OF FLORIDA, STATE OF ILLINOIS, COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS, STATE OF MICHIGAN, STATE OF NEW JERSEY, STATE OF NEW YORK, STATE OF TEXAS, ex rel. REYNALDO SOLANO AND NEALS MAXILIN, Plaintiffs, Appellants, v. BARTON ASSOCIATES, INC., Defendant, Appellee, MEDTECH WORLDWIDE, INC.; REALTIME PHYSICIANS, LLC; OCENTURE, LLC; CARELUMINA, LLC, Defendants. APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS [Hon. George A. O'Toole, Jr., U.S. District Judge] Before Barron, Chief Judge, Howard and Rikelman, Circuit Judges. Christopher Furlong, with whom Frier Levitt was on brief, for appellants. Jordan Bock, with whom Kevin Martin, Miranda Hooker, and Goodwin Procter LLP were on brief, for appellee. May 28, 2026  RIKELMAN, Circuit Judge. This case is a qui tam action under the False Claims Act (FCA). See 31 U.S.C. §§ 3729-3733. In 2022, Reynaldo Solano and Neals Maxilin sued Barton Associates, Inc., claiming that Barton ran a fraudulent scheme to induce others to submit false claims to Medicare and other government benefit programs in exchange for a fee. The district court granted Barton's motion to dismiss, concluding that Solano and Maxilin had failed to plead fraud with the particularity required by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 9(b). They now appeal the dismissal, as well as the district court's decision to deny their request for reconsideration or, in the alternative, to amend their complaint. Discerning no legal error or abuse of discretion in the district court's rulings, we affirm. I. BACKGROUND A. Relevant Facts Solano owns a company that specializes in repairs and installations of mobility and accessibility devices, such as wheelchair lifts and scooters.1 In 2019, he received an unsolicited phone call from an account manager at Barton. Barton operates a staffing agency that assigns medical professionals to "locum tenens," or temporary, positions at hospitals and other 1 Because the district court dismissed the case at the pleading stage, we draw the facts from the complaint. See United States ex rel. Duxbury v. Ortho Biotech Prods., L.P., 579 F.3d 13, 20 (1st Cir. 2009). - 3 - medical entities across the United States. Solano alleges that the Barton employee sought to recruit him into Barton's "scheme" to "defraud Medicare and other government funded health plans." According to Solano, the Barton employee outlined the scheme over "several conversations." The employee explained that Barton recruits individuals or medical organizations ("clients") that provide medical services or products and can access the contact information of patients eligible for Medicare or other government programs. Barton then "encourages" its clients to create a call center to solicit requests for medical treatment from those patients. If a patient seeks a medical service or product, the client would then connect the patient with Barton, which would assign the patient to one of its own physicians to prescribe the service or product. Solano alleges that, on top of what the patient pays for the physician consultation, Barton collects an additional $40 "assessment fee" from the client for each prescription its physicians write, and the client then submits a claim to the government for providing the servi