The opinion
USCA11 Case: 23-13670 Document: 47-1 Date Filed: 08/22/2025 Page: 1 of 14
[PUBLISH]
In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Eleventh Circuit
____________________
No. 23-13670
____________________
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
ex rel Robert V. Smith, et al.,
Plaintiffs,
ROBERT V. SMITH,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
versus
JAY ODOM,
OKALOOSA COUNTY BOARD OF COUNTY
COMMISSIONERS,
Defendants-Appellees.
____________________
USCA11 Case: 23-13670 Document: 47-1 Date Filed: 08/22/2025 Page: 2 of 14
2 Opinion of the Court 23-13670
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of Florida
D.C. Docket No. 3:20-cv-03678-MCR-ZCB
____________________
Before NEWSOM, GRANT, and ABUDU, Circuit Judges.
GRANT, Circuit Judge:
The owner of an airport (known in this context as an airport
sponsor) can either provide aeronautical services—like fueling and
aircraft maintenance—itself or farm them out to third-party
companies, known as fixed-base operators. If a sponsor chooses
the latter, guardrails are in place to ensure adequate competition.
Federal law requires airport sponsors seeking federal funding to
certify that they will not give any fixed-base operator an exclusive
right to offer services at their airport. In 2014, multiple news
outlets published articles revealing that an airport sponsor had
likely done just that: the owner of one fixed-base operator at the
Destin Airport had quietly bought the other, even while the
airport’s sponsor still certified to the Federal Aviation
Administration that it was not giving any service provider an
exclusive right to operate at the airport.
About five years later, after those two operators had
officially merged, Robert Smith asked the airport sponsor to let him
in on the game—he wanted to run a second fixed-base operator at
the airport. When his request was declined, Smith sued—but not
for the right to bring his company in at the airport. Instead, he
USCA11 Case: 23-13670 Document: 47-1 Date Filed: 08/22/2025 Page: 3 of 14
23-13670 Opinion of the Court 3
alleged that both the airport sponsor and the former owner of the
two airport service companies that had merged had violated the
False Claims Act by falsely certifying to the government that they
were complying with the grant assurances for fixed-base operators.
The district court dismissed Smith’s complaint with prejudice after
finding the Act’s public disclosure bar foreclosed his claims; the
same allegations, after all, had been featured in news articles years
before. We agree, and affirm the district court.
I.
The Destin Executive Airport is sponsored by Okaloosa
County, which has received millions of dollars in federal and state
grants for airport improvements. An airport sponsor receiving
financial assistance through federal grants must make various
written “assurances” to the government to be eligible for funding.
49 U.S.C. § 47107(a). In other words, the sponsor must certify to
the government that it will do or not do certain things. One such
assurance is that the sponsor will not grant an “exclusive right to
use the airport” to any single “fixed-base operator.” Id. §
47107(a)(4). Fixed-base operators are commercial entities
“providing aeronautical services such as fueling, maintenance,
storage, ground and flight instruction, etc. to the public.” Airport
Compliance Manual, FAA Order 5190.6B § 8.9 n.25 (Sept. 30, 2009).
Until 2009, Miracle Strip Aviation was the sole fixed-base
operator at the airport. That year, the airport added a second,
Destin Jet, owned by Jay Odom. According to the operative
complaint, which we credit at this stage, plaintiff Robert Smith
USCA11 Case: 23-13670 Document: 47-1 Date Filed: 08/22/2025 Page: 4 of 14
4 Opinion of the Court 23-13670
received flight training from Miracle Strip Aviation in 1985 and
worked as a commercial pilot. His work allowed him to interact
regularly with both fixed-base operators and their employees.
In 2012, Miracle Strip was acquired by Regal Capital. On
paper, Phillip Ward and Jack Simmons owned Regal Capital. But
according to Smith, the purchase of Miracle Strip was actually
funded by Odom, the owner of Destin Jet—Ward and Simmons
were merely “strawmen.” The County learned about the
acquisition, but not the alleged strawman scheme, in early 2013. It
approved an assignment of Miracle Strip’s lease to Regal Capital,
and Miracle Strip was renamed Regal Air. Less than a year later,
Sterling Diversified—owned by Odom and two others—acquired
Regal Capital (and Regal Air). The County learned that Odom
owned Regal Air in March 2014.
At least two news outlets reported these events. On March
29, 2014, an article in the Northwest Florida Daily News reported
that “a company associated with Destin Jet owner Jay Odom
bought out the competition at Destin Airport.” The article quoted
the airport director as declaring that Odom’s actions “violated two
Federal Aviation Administration grant assurances.” It also alleged
that Odom told airport administrators that two fixed-base
operators “could not co-exist at Destin Airport in the current
environment of declining general aviation activity.” Apparently
that argument did not fall on deaf ears. Okaloosa County Airports
Director Sunil Harman acknowledged that a “declining market
since 2008” made him “fairly confident” that the case was
USCA11 Case: 23-13670 Document: 47-1 Date Filed: 08/22/2025 Page: 5 of 14
23-13670 Opinion of the Court 5
“compelling enough to point to a single fixed base operator at the
airport.”
Aviation International News chronicled the story a little
more than a month later, reporting that airport officials and owners
of Destin Jet were working to resolve a dispute involving “county
anti-trust safeguards and FAA grant assurance violations that
resulted when the owners of Destin Jet allegedly purchased rival
provider Regal Air Destin at the end of last year.” The article also
said that Harman agreed that fuel sales data suggested the airport
could not support two fixed-base operators.
Smith alleges that in September 2014, the County reported
Regal Air’s ownership change to the FAA and asked whether the
acquisition would result in a violation of its exclusive-rights grant
assurances. In response, he says, the FAA cautioned the County on
“issues related to exclusive rights” and suggested obtaining a legal
opinion from the FAA’s Office of General Counsel.
But that never happened. Instead, the County moved
forward with authorizing Destin Jet and Regal Air to “operate
under common ownership and brand.” The County, Smith says,
was concerned that sustaining two operators was not viable due to
declining fuel sales, a downturn in aviation activity, loss of airport
revenues, and lease compliance issues. And in the County’s view,
it had raised its concerns “regarding compliance with the grant
assurances” with the FAA. The FAA, in turn, had responded that
“the acquisition of a competing [fixed-base operator], even if it
results in a single [fixed-base operator] provider,” is a “prevalent
USCA11 Case: 23-13670 Document: 47-1 Date Filed: 08/22/2025 Page: 6 of 14
6 Opinion of the Court 23-13670
practice” that “does not in itself constitute” a violation of grant
assurances.
Odom sold Destin Jet (which had merged with Regal Air) in
2016. About three years later, Smith approached the County about
establishing a competing fixed-base operator at the airport. He
proposed leasing one of the two existing fixed-base operator
locations that were being run by a single operator or leasing space
on the airport to build a third location. The County denied his
request, citing both the preexisting leases and a lack of available
land. After his request was denied, Smith brought a qui tam action
as a relator under the False Claims Act against Odom and the
County.1 Smith alleged that Odom’s acquisition of Regal Air,
together with his ownership of Miracle Strip, had created an
exclusive right for a single fixed-base operator, which meant the
County had made false certifications to the government in its
funding requests. Smith added that the County had maintained
that exclusive right by (1) approving the merger between Destin Jet
and Regal Air and (2) denying his request to establish a competing
fixed-base operator. Smith identified over forty times between
2012 and 2019 in which the County allegedly made false statements
in grant applications, resulting in over $30 million in funding.
1 Smith also sued under Florida’s False Claims Act. See Fla. Stat. § 68.082
(2024). Because the Florida statute is modeled after the federal False Claims
Act, the “same standard is applied to the evaluation of the claims under both
statutes.” United States ex rel. Heater v. Holy Cross Hosp., Inc., 510 F. Supp. 2d 1027,
1033–34 n.5 (S.D. Fla. 2007). We therefore consider them together.
USCA11 Case: 23-13670 Document: 47-1 Date Filed: 08/22/2025 Page: 7 of 14
23-13670 Opinion of the Court 7
After Smith amended his complaint, both Odom and the
County moved to dismiss. The district court dismissed the
amended complaint with prejudice for two reasons. First, the court
determined that the False Claims Act’s public disclosure provision
barred Smith’s suit because the allegations in the complaint were
publicly disclosed in the two 2014 news articles. Second, the court
concluded that the complaint failed to satisfy the heightened
pleading standard required for fraud claims. The court later denied
Smith’s request for leave to amend and to amend the judgment.
This is his appeal.
II.
“We review a dismissal with prejudice for failure to state a
claim under the False Claims Act de novo.” Urquilla-Diaz v. Kaplan
Univ., 780 F.3d 1039, 1050 (11th Cir. 2015). “In doing so, we accept
the allegations in the complaint as true and construe them” in the
relator’s favor. Id. We review the denial of a motion for leave to
amend a complaint for abuse of discretion, but we review a
decision that a particular amendment to the complaint would be
futile de novo. Cockrell v. Sparks, 510 F.3d 1307, 1310 (11th Cir.
2007).
III.
“The False Claims Act targets just that—false claims.”
Hickman v. Spirit of Athens, Ala., Inc., 985 F.3d 1284, 1285 (11th Cir.
2021). Among other things, the Act prohibits (1) knowingly
presenting a false or fraudulent claim for approval or payment to
the government and (2) knowingly making or causing a false
USCA11 Case: 23-13670 Document: 47-1 Date Filed: 08/22/2025 Page: 8 of 14
8 Opinion of the Court 23-13670
record or statement to be made that was material to a false or
fraudulent claim. See 31 U.S.C. § 3729(a)(1)(A)–(B).
To ferret out false claims, the Act relies on private
individuals, who often have a front-row seat to fraud against the
government—and are sometimes in an even better position than
the government to identify that fraud. So one of the Act’s “primary
purposes” is to incentivize those people to help the government get
its money back. United States ex rel. Jacobs v. JP Morgan Chase Bank,
N.A., 113 F.4th 1294, 1299 (11th Cir. 2024) (quotation omitted). To
that end, private individuals who know about false claims against
the government—called relators in this context—can file civil
lawsuits known as qui tam actions to bring the fraud to light. See
31 U.S.C. § 3730; Jacobs, 113 F.4th 1294 at 1299–1300. A successful
qui tam suit results in money damages for both the relator and the
government. See 31 U.S.C. § 3730(d).
But if the fraud and false claims allegations have already
been publicized, only the original source of that information can
sue. See id. § 3730(e)(4)(A)–(B). Otherwise, copycat lawsuits would
flood the system, generating less helpful relators at best and
exploitative vultures at worst—in neither case making it any more
likely that the government would recover for fraudulent claims.
See United States ex rel. Bibby v. Mortg. Invs. Corp., 987 F.3d 1340, 1353
(11th Cir. 2021). That’s why a qui tam suit must be dismissed if
“substantially the same allegations or transactions as alleged in the
action or claim were publicly disclosed” unless “the person
USCA11 Case: 23-13670 Document: 47-1 Date Filed: 08/22/2025 Page: 9 of 14
23-13670 Opinion of the Court 9
bringing the action is an original source of the information.” 31
U.S.C. § 3730(e)(4)(A).
Public disclosure can occur in a variety of ways according to
the statute. News coverage is the most obvious. Id.
§ 3730(e)(4)(A)(iii). A court case is another, as is a congressional
hearing. Id. § 3730(e)(4)(A)(i)–(ii). The public disclosure provision
does not strip relators of valid claims if a media source scoops the
allegations, however. A relator can still bring suit if he is an original
source—someone who had already voluntarily disclosed the
information to the government before the public disclosure or
someone who has “knowledge that is independent of and
materially adds to the publicly disclosed allegations.” Id.
§ 3730(e)(4)(A)–(B).
Three questions determine whether the public disclosure
bar applies. The first is whether the same general allegations in the
plaintiff’s complaint have already been publicly disclosed. See
Jacobs, 113 F.4th at 1300. If yes, we consider whether those two
sets of allegations are “substantially the same.” Id. (quotation
omitted). If that too is a yes, we ask whether the plaintiff is an
original source of the information. Id.
Neither party disputes that news articles “clearly qualify as
news media.” United States ex rel. Osheroff v. Humana Inc., 776 F.3d
805, 813 (11th Cir. 2015). Here, the district court took judicial
notice of the two 2014 news articles, both of which discuss the
consolidation of the two fixed-base operators and the resulting
grant assurance violations.
USCA11 Case: 23-13670 Document: 47-1 Date Filed: 08/22/2025 Page: 10 of 14
10 Opinion of the Court 23-13670
But Smith argues that these articles do not contain any
“allegations” because the “limited facts” in the public domain “do
not allow the conclusion that a fraud has occurred.” That’s not so.
To allege fraud, one need only present a claim or statement
submitted to the government and “the true set of facts” showing
that the claim or statement is not true. Bibby, 987 F.3d at 1353
(quotation omitted). The articles here described the County’s
grant assurances related to federal funding, noted that federal
money “comes with strings attached,” and explained that when
Destin Jet acquired the only other fixed-base operator at the airport
the County violated two of these assurances. These statements are
more than enough to meet the standard for public disclosure.
That brings us to whether the allegations in the complaint
are substantially the same as those in the public disclosures. Smith
insists that they are not. He says that the complaint, unlike the
articles, discusses the strawman scheme and the County’s actions
after Odom gained control of both fixed-base operators. But
substantially the same “does not mean identical.” Jacobs, 113 F.4th
at 1302 (emphasis deleted). “Significant overlap between the
plaintiff’s allegations and the public disclosures is sufficient to show
that the disclosed information forms the basis of the lawsuit and is
substantially similar to the allegations in the complaint.” Id.
(alterations adopted and quotation omitted). It is not open season,
in other words, for would-be relators who have one piece of a
puzzle that is already largely complete.
USCA11 Case: 23-13670 Document: 47-1 Date Filed: 08/22/2025 Page: 11 of 14
23-13670 Opinion of the Court 11
The articles here outlined the same scheme that Smith raises
in his complaint. Both examined the conflict created by Odom’s
acquisition of Regal Air. In fact, one opened: “Late last year, a
company associated with Destin Jet owner Jay Odom bought out
the competition at Destin Airport.” As for the grant assurances,
one article explained that Odom’s acquisition of the competing
fixed-base operator “violated two Federal Aviation Administration
grant assurances,” and the other said that airport officials were
“working to resolve a dispute involving county anti-trust
safeguards and FAA grant assurance violations that resulted when
the owners of Destin Jet allegedly purchased rival provider Regal
Air Destin at the end of last year.” Both reported Harman’s belief
(echoed in Smith’s complaint) that the airport could not support
multiple fixed-base operators.
Smith argues that these allegations are not substantially the
same as his own because the articles discuss only violations due to
Odom’s actions, whereas he alleges that the County’s conduct led to
additional violations. He highlights two actions that post-dated the
articles: (1) the County’s failure to get approval from the FAA
before merging the two fixed-base operators in late 2014; and (2) its
denial of his request to open a competing fixed-base operator in
2019.
The articles, it’s true, do not discuss any of the County’s
actions after their publication in the first half of 2014. But neither
of the County’s actions changed or expanded the scheme. Smith’s
complaint and the news articles center on the same issue: the lack
USCA11 Case: 23-13670 Document: 47-1 Date Filed: 08/22/2025 Page: 12 of 14
12 Opinion of the Court 23-13670
of competition between the fixed-base operators. And they both
allege the same violation of the Act: that Destin Jet’s acquisition of
Regal Air caused the County to violate its assurance to the FAA
that a single fixed-base operator would “not be given an exclusive
right to use the airport.” 49 U.S.C. § 47107(a)(4). Because there is
“significant overlap” between the allegations in the complaint and
the allegations in the news articles, this prong of the public
disclosure bar is satisfied. Jacobs, 113 F.4th at 1302 (quotation
omitted).
The final inquiry is whether Smith is an original source of
the information, either because he already told the government
about it or because his knowledge is “independent of and
materially adds to the publicly disclosed allegations.” 31 U.S.C.
§ 3730(e)(4)(B). For that latter point, if “the public disclosures are
already sufficient to give rise to an inference of fraud, cumulative
allegations do not materially add to the public disclosures.” Jacobs,
113 F.4th at 1303 (quotation omitted). The same goes for
“[b]ackground information and details that help one understand or
contextualize a public disclosure”—those too are “insufficient to
grant original source status.” Id. (alterations adopted and
quotation omitted).
Smith does not claim that he disclosed any information to
the government before the news articles were published, but he
argues that he still qualifies as an original source because several of
his allegations materially add to the public disclosures. To start, he
says he revealed that Odom engaged in a strawman scheme to
USCA11 Case: 23-13670 Document: 47-1 Date Filed: 08/22/2025 Page: 13 of 14
23-13670 Opinion of the Court 13
“covertly” gain control of Regal Air before Sterling Diversified
officially acquired it. He adds that “actual economic conditions at
[the airport] did not justify a merger” of Regal Air and Destin Jet
and says he was “denied an opportunity to lease or develop a new”
operation at the airport, “which is a separate violation of grant
assurances.”
These are details, not material additions. The articles
established that one entity controlled both fixed-base operators at
the airport and that this was a violation of the County’s FAA grant
assurances. Smith’s new filings provide background information
and additional details—but that’s it. Allegations like the ones here
are not material additions because they “merely supplement and
contextualize the core fraud hypothesis” already disclosed. Id. The
heart of Smith’s complaint and the articles is the same: the
consolidation of Destin Jet and Regal Air gave the merged entity an
“exclusive right to use the airport” in violation of the County’s
grant assurances. 49 U.S.C. § 47107(a)(4).
Because the allegations disclosed in the articles significantly
overlap with Smith’s allegations and he is not an original source of
the information, we conclude that his claims cannot clear the False
Claims Act’s public disclosure bar. We affirm the district court’s
order dismissing the amended complaint.2
2 The district court also dismissed the suit for failure to satisfy Federal Rule of
Civil Procedure 9(b). But because we affirm the dismissal on public disclosure
grounds, we need not consider the 9(b) question.
USCA11 Case: 23-13670 Document: 47-1 Date Filed: 08/22/2025 Page: 14 of 14
14 Opinion of the Court 23-13670
IV.
Smith also challenges the district court’s denial of his
request for leave to amend his complaint. Leave to amend is freely
given “when justice so requires,” but a court may deny leave “if
amendment would be futile.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 15(a)(2); L.S. ex rel.
Hernandez v. Peterson, 982 F.3d 1323, 1332 (11th Cir. 2020). “A district
court may find futility if a prerequisite to relief is belied by the facts
alleged in the complaint.” Hernandez, 982 F.3d at 1332 (alteration
adopted and quotation omitted).
Smith argues that, if given leave to amend, he can allege
“additional facts that demonstrate he is an original source”
including “additional detail regarding how he learned of the
allegations.” That is not enough. An original source, as we have
said, has “knowledge that is independent of and materially adds to
the publicly disclosed allegations or transactions.” 31 U.S.C.
§ 3730(e)(4)(B) (emphasis added). While Smith’s proposed
amendment may help establish that his knowledge is independent
of the public disclosures, even he does not suggest that it would
also show that his knowledge “materially adds” to what is already
publicly available. And because this requirement is essential,
Smith’s proposed amendment is futile.
* * *
We AFFIRM the district court’s order.