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Is there precedent for the government trying to void a settlement agreement on these sorts of grounds?
To put the question another way, has any US agency gone to court and argued that settlement agreements signed on behalf of the United States during the previous administration are invalid and therefore the government should be able to recoup the settlement proceeds?
I've never heard of this happening, but if it's a regular practice, then I'll agree it's not an escalation.
One of the underappreciated tragedies of the second Trump administration is the wholesale destruction of the credibility the Justice Department had spent 200 years building. What was once one of the most respected institutions among attorneys and judges alike has been reduced to having the reputation of the kind of lawyer you hire out of the yellow pages, and the only people who are willing to work for them are those who would otherwise be practicing divorce law in West Virginia. Judges as recently as two years ago gave the government wide deference because it was assumed that they wouldn't launch a prosecution unless the case had merit, wouldn't make an argument that didn't have merit, and would comply with judicial orders.
When you come up with a set of seven criteria and tell me that unless meeting all of them is something the government regularly does, then doing so this time will meet some broad definition of "escalation" conveniently ignores the fact that six months ago the president would use a bullshit collusive lawsuit to get personal access to taxpayer money that hadn't been appropriated by congress would have seemed completely unthinkable. Settlement agreements are voidable if there was a conflict of interest. The Federal government regularly goes after people who received funds that were improperly distributed, even when those people aren't at fault. Putting two and two together and letting a court decide isn't escalation.
I'm not sure I understand this, can you give me a couple of examples so I know what you are talking about? I've never heard of the government entering into a settlement agreement and the agreement later being voided due to there having been a conflict of interest. I suspect you are confusing settlements that require judicial approval, such as class actions, with settlements that do not require judicial approval.
Again, can you give me a couple of examples? The word "improperly" is vague. I certainly agree that if you receive money you were never eligible for, you are potentially on the hook. But if the eligibility criteria are changed retroactively?
They're called collusive suits, where the parties aren't actually in opposition and are using the court to achieve some objective other than redressing a legitimate wrong. They may be permitted at the state level in certain circumstances to achieve various policy objectives, but they're prohibited at the Federal level due to the case and controversy requirement, and are considered a form of fraud.
To give an example, suppose I'm the sole director of a nonprofit, and there's an elderly volunteer who is going through some hard times and I want to help him out. The law says that I can't just give him the money, since it has to be used for legitimate business, and I don't want to hire him as a full time employee because that opens up all kinds of bullshit with insurance, taxes, and the like.
He injures himself while volunteering. The injuries aren't serious, but there's a legitimate claim worth about a thousand dollars . I tell him to sue the nonprofit, and I agree to settle the case for ten thousand dollars. As far as the accounts are concerned, it just looks like a settlement for a lawsuit, nothing to see here. But if the State AG finds out, you're in trouble.
There are other kinds of collusive suits, some of which are entirely fraudulent, and if you're expecting something exactly on point, keep in mind that in most knotty legal issues, there isn't going to be one. I rarely do legal research in my practice, but when I do I don't expect to find some showstopper, because if one existed I wouldn't be arguing in the first place. All we can go by is general principles.
The Social Security Administration discovers nearly 2 million instances of overpayment per year, about 30% of which are administrative errors. While you may argue that they weren't entitled to the money, the point I'm trying to make is that these people are completely innocent of any wrongdoing, yet they are still required to repay the money.
When a court vacates a settlement due to fraud, what they're saying is that the recipient wasn't entitled to the money. It's as simple as that. The settlement never existed, legally speaking. It was illegal. It's not as if Congress came back and passed a law that retroactively invalidated the settlement. Realistically, my scenario isn't going to happen, because I don't see any money being distributed. Somebody will file a suit, a judge will issue an injunction preventing the funds from being distributed, and the issue will be tied up in litigation until the sun expands into a red giant and swallows the earth.
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Most previous cases revolve around active fraud, noncompliance or unintentional mispayments, although I'll note that the latter have pretty wide avenues for relief and you get deep into equittable relief estoppel whatever really quick. Even there, a lot of the clawbacks come under other specific statutory authorization.
I can't find anything that's about intentional disbursements that a different DOJ later concluded were unauthorized. Even Iran-Contra didn't get unwound like Rov_Scam's hypothesizing: the feds tried and had some legal success to pull back money the executive spent and definitely didn't 'legitimately' have, but never got the money back, there was a much more constrained appropriations interface, and it was a mess in general.
EDIT: on the other hand, this isn't a settlement-settlement; because it's not reviewed by a judge, voiding it has a lot more options available.
I think that -- generally speaking -- settlements of legal claims do not need to be reviewed by a judge to be binding. I'm not sure how this Anti-Weaponization Fund will work, but presumably a claimant completes some kind of documentation; at some point the fund offers the person money; and, if the claimant accepts the offer, he signs some kind of release. Presumably if the claimant supplied false (and important) information in connection with his documentation, that would potentially be a basis for the government to take the position that the settlement is void and the money needs to be paid back. Absent that, I'm skeptical that there's much precedent for trying to recoup the money on the ground that the underlying settlement was collusive; or ultra vires; or whatever. So that if a future administration tried to do so, it could reasonably seen as escalation.
Here's a question: When the Trump administration cut off funding for a lot of USAID recipients, did the US also file lawsuits to recoup monies already paid? If not, that's another area for possible future escalation.
A purely contractual settlement has the defendant and claimant sign an agreement to end the lawsuit; it is remedied by bringing a court case again (though the second time, it's for breach of contract). These don't have to be reviewed by a judge unless there is a breach, and the standard is very generous toward the non-breaching party.
A judicially enforced settlement is one that's been presented to and accepted by a judge, and formally become part of the settlement of the case. These have to be reviewed first, but they become res judicata and a breach of the settlement terms can be punished with contempt.
As far as I can tell, no. The closest I can find was the big EPA fund held at CitiBank, but there it was still an attempt to go for funds awarded to Citibank rather than delivered to the grantees.
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