[PUBLISH] In the United States Court of Appeals For the Eleventh Circuit

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No. 21-13673 ____________________

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, ex rel., Plaintiff, 84PARTNERS, LLC, Relator, Plaintiff-Appellant, versus NUFLO, INC., et al.,

Defendants,

GENERAL DYNAMICS ELECTRIC BOAT, HUNTINGTON INGALLS INDUSTRIES, USCA11 Case: 21-13673 Document: 72-1 Date Filed: 08/17/2023 Page: 2 of 18

2 Opinion of the Court 21-13673

NEWPORT NEWS SHIPBUILDING DIVISION,

Defendants-Appellees. ____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida D.C. Docket No. 3:14-cv-01256-TJC-PDB ____________________

Before BRANCH and GRANT, Circuit Judges, and HINKLE,* District Judge HINKLE, District Judge: This is a False Claims Act or “qui tam” action arising from the delivery of defective pipe fittings for installation in nuclear at- tack submarines. The district court dismissed the second amended complaint with prejudice for failure to plead with particularity the actual submission or payment of false claims. After careful review and with the benefit of oral argument, we affirm. I. Facts For more than 20 years, the United States Navy contracted with the defendant-appellee General Dynamics Electric Boat

* Honorable Robert L. Hinkle, United States District Judge for the Northern District of Florida, sitting by designation USCA11 Case: 21-13673 Document: 72-1 Date Filed: 08/17/2023 Page: 3 of 18

21-13673 Opinion of the Court 3

Corporation (“EB”) for the construction, testing, and delivery of Virginia-class nuclear attack submarines. EB in turn entered into a subcontract with the defendant-appellee Huntington Ingalls Indus- tries, Newport News Shipbuilding Division (“NNS”). EB and NNS had a “teaming arrangement” under which they built submarines for final delivery to the Navy. EB and NNS procured parts known as pipe fittings from Nuflo, Inc. (“Nuflo”), either directly or through a distributor, Syn- ergy Flow Systems, LLC (“Synergy”). According to the second amended complaint—often referred to in this opinion simply as the complaint—roughly 4,000 of the 225,000 parts supplied by Nuflo were defective. Some had improper materials or welds. Others had not been properly inspected, tested, or traced through the process. These and all the other factual allegations in the complaint must be accepted as true for purposes of this appeal, construed in the light most favorable to the plaintiff. White v. Lemacks, 183 F.3d 1253, 1255 (11th Cir. 1999). EB or NNS discovered some of the defective parts and ap- parently rejected them; the complaint does not allege EB or NNS accepted parts they knew were defective. But EB and NNS failed to discover other defects. At least 42 defective parts made it into submarines delivered to the Navy. The complaint alleges this oc- curred because EB and NNS recklessly disr