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Dogged by whistleblower kickback claims over its multiple sclerosis med Gilenya for years, Novartis has run off a recent string of court wins to escape the allegations...But in one New Jersey suit, Novartis will now be forced to confront a former employee's claims that he was fired without cause for bringing a kickback scheme to light...Novartis must face claims it retaliated against one of its employees for raising concerns the drugmaker engaged in a pharmacy benefit manager kickback scheme...former Novartis employee Joseph Perri alleged he was terminated after notifying management about "disparities" between the drugmaker's commercial and Medicare Part D rebates paid to a PBM for Gilenya...READ MORE

Bristol Myers Squibb and Gilead Sciences have been locked in a CAR-T patent fight, with BMS scoring a lucrative victory following a trial late last year. Now, Gilead has failed to persuade a judge to overturn the $752 million verdict—and the company could face bigger damages down the line... Judge James Otero rejected numerous arguments from Gilead’s Kite Pharma unit that patents held by BMS’ Juno Therapeutics are invalid, plus that procedural flaws in the legal process warrant a new trial...READ MORE

When federal prosecutors nabbed a guilty plea from a former exec at Novartis' Sandoz in an expansive price-fixing probe, it seemed to spell trouble for the massive generics player. Now, the other shoe has dropped for Novartis—to the tune of $195 million and an extraordinary confession—and more could be on the way...Novartis agreed Tuesday to pay $195 million and enter deferred prosecution to settle federal claims it colluded in an industrywide price-fixing scheme between 2013 and 2015...The criminal settlement is the single largest domestic antitrust deal ever signed....and it comes two weeks after a former Sandoz unit exec pleaded guilty to federal conspiracy charges in the scheme...READ MORE

Purdue Pharma has requested permission from the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York to develop a new product to reverse opioid overdoses...Purdue is seeking authorization for a development agreement between its affiliate, Greenfield Bioventures, and an unnamed pharmaceutical company. The proposed agreement would allow Purdue to grant intellectual property related to the nalmefene injectable to its unnamed partner, which in turn, would license its autoinjector technology to Purdue...READ MORE

At least four federal class-action lawsuits have been filed against the Chinese government that aim to recover trillions of dollars in damages for what plaintiffs allege is China's failure to contain the coronavirus outbreak and notify the international community about its dangers...In one suit filed in late March, a coalition of California property managers and an accounting firm are seeking to represent all "small businesses" in California that have suffered as a result of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. A suit filed in mid-March by several Florida residents aims to assemble its own class of millions of people...All of the suits accuse the Chinese government of direct complicity in the COVID-19 outbreak and hope to use the machinery of the U.S. legal system to recover enormous amounts in damages. But the chance these actions will lead to any actual recoveries is slim, legal experts said...READ MORE

Anthem faces a federal lawsuit for submitting inaccurate diagnostic data to get a higher Medicare reimbursement...The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York said in the lawsuit...that Anthem failed to find and delete inaccurate diagnosis codes from 2014 to early 2018 through its “chart review program,”...“By ignoring its duty to delete thousands of inaccurate diagnoses, Anthem unlawfully obtained and retained from [Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services] millions of dollars in payments under the risk adjustment payment system for Medicare Part C,” the lawsuit said...READ MORE

Lawsuits over Medicaid rebates are a fact of life in pharma, and in one particularly long-running case, Bristol-Myers Squibb stands accused of fiddling with its prices to lower payments. Now, after seven years in litigation, that lawsuit could be nearing an end...Bristol reached an "agreement in principle" in January to settle a 2013 whistleblower lawsuit accusing the company of manipulating the average manufacture price of its drugs in order to underpay Medicaid rebates between 2007 and 2016, according to an SEC filing...READ MORE

A federal judge increased to $1.2 billion the damages that Gilead Sciences Inc must pay to Bristol-Myers Squibb Co in a patent infringement case regarding technology for treating cancer...The judgment was entered against Gilead’s Kite Pharma unit on its “counterclaims of non-infringement and invalidity”, according to a ruling by U.S. District Judge Philip Gutierrez...The new total of $1.2 billion includes $778 million awarded by a federal jury in December plus enhanced damages of $389 million and a pre-judgment interest on the jury’s verdict in the amount of $32.8 million, the judge said in his ruling...The patent at issue in the lawsuit, which Juno (subsidiary of BMS) licenses from the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center...relates to CAR T-cell immunotherapy for cancer...READ MORE

Amid efforts to close a $1.6 billion opioid settlement, Mallinckrodt has fought tooth and nail to escape a massive Medicaid rebate bill for its controversial H.P. Acthar Gel. Instead of ceding ground, the U.S. government opted to take the fight right back to Mallinckrodt––and it could create even more trouble for the embattled drugmaker...The federal government has joined a False Claims Act whistleblower suit filed in Boston accusing Mallinckrodt of underpaying Medicaid rebates for Acthar by "hundreds of millions of dollars,"...READ MORE

Opioid makers and distributors who proposed paying almost $50 billion to resolve U.S. lawsuits over the addictive drugs are drawing more support from states, including California and New York, as pressure mounts for a deal before a trial starts next month...But nearly two dozen states and most of the cities and counties suing to hold the industry responsible for the havoc and high costs of the opioid epidemic say the terms still aren’t good enough...READ MORE