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Biogen’s Q2 earnings report was headlined by stronger than expected second-quarter sales for its multiple sclerosis drugs. Less touted the company’s disclosure that it had agreed in principle to pay about $900 million to settle an old whistleblower lawsuit involving some of the same products...The payment brings to a close a so-called qui tam case, initially brought in 2012, in which former Biogen sales representative Michael Bawduniak alleged that the company ran sham speaker and consultant programs between 2009 and March 2014...The suit contended that these meetings, ostensibly required for the purpose of gathering physician input, were unnecessary. Furthermore, it said the meetings were merely a vehicle for Biogen’s marketing department to shuttle kickbacks to doctors to continue prescribing the company’s drugs after the entrance of a competitor product in the MS space, Novartis’s Gilenya...READ MORE

The anticipated Greek lawsuit against Novartis has been filed, with the country asking for 214 million euros in compensation from the pharmaceutical giant...Greek Health Minister Thanos Plevris said in a statement that the Greek state is seeking compensation for the damage it has suffered “from the actions that Novartis itself has admitted to in the USA that concerns payments to doctors.” The minister added that the state reserves the right to claim any damage it has suffered with a newer lawsuit and is clear that “all sanctions against Novartis for its illegal practices will be applied,”...READ MORE

This week, a federal judge in Greeneville, Tennessee, sentenced seven individuals and seven related corporate entities for their roles in a multimillion-dollar health care fraud scheme...Peter Bolos and his co-conspirators, Michael Palso, Andrew Assad, Scott Roix, Larry Smith, Mihir Taneja, Arun Kapoor and Maikel Bolos...deceived pharmacy benefit managers, such as Express Scripts and CVS Caremark, regarding tens of thousands of prescriptions. The PBMs processed and approved claims for prescription drugs on behalf of insurance companies. Bolos and his co-conspirators defrauded the PBMs into authorizing millions of dollars’ worth of claims that private insurers such as Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee, and public insurers such as Medicaid and TRICARE, paid to pharmacies controlled by the co-conspirators...READ MORE

A lawyer for two Ohio counties said...that CVS Health Corp, Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc and Walmart Inc should fund an $878 million plan to address the opioid crisis there, as a first-of-its-kind trial got underway to determine the pharmacy chains' contribution...the counties want the companies to fund a $878 million five-year plan that Mark Lanier, a lawyer representing the counties, said on Monday was aimed at solving the opioid crisis rather than allocating blame...READ MORE

Apparently, a $107 million deal value isn't large enough to be considered anticompetitive when viewed in the context of delaying generics to a blockbuster brand...A Delaware federal judge reached that conclusion when he threw out an antitrust claim targeting a pay-for-delay deal between AstraZeneca and generic maker Accord Healthcare over the British pharma’s popular antipsychotic Seroquel XR...But that was only a half-win for AstraZeneca in a class action suit. The judge has allowed another similar claim brought by drug wholesalers, retailers and payers against a separate deal that AZ originally signed with Handa Pharma and later passed on to Endo’s Par Pharmaceutical...Both claims allege that the “reverse payment” agreements AZ inked with those generic makers to settle Seroquel XR patent disputes delayed and suppressed competition, causing higher prices...READ MORE

The U.S. Supreme Court...rejected bids by Insys Therapeutics Inc founder John Kapoor and another former executive of the drugmaker to overturn their convictions for conspiring to bribe doctors to prescribe addictive opioids and defraud insurers into paying for them...Kapoor, 78, is serving a prison sentence of 5-1/2 years and is the highest-level corporate executive convicted at trial of crimes related to the opioid epidemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans in the past two decades...READ MORE

Two drug distributors cannot bring federal civil rights claims against UnitedHealthcare's pharmacy benefit manager Optum unit and an association of state pharmacy boards for allegedly shutting them out of the market by denying accreditation from state boards, a federal appeals court ruled...upheld a lower court judge's dismissal of a lawsuit by distributors PriMed Pharmaceuticals LLC and Oak Drugs Inc against Optum and the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy, finding the defendants could not be sued under the federal civil rights law because they were not state actors...According to the lawsuit, filed in federal court in Newark, PriMed and Oak Drugs, both of which operate in multiple states, were deprived of business because Optum, one of the nation's leading pharmacy benefit managers, requires pharmacies it works with to buy only from distributors accredited by NABP...The distributors said the NABP rejected their applications for accreditation without good reason, violating their due process rights...READ MORE

What do you do when you can’t find a judge who doesn’t own Pfizer stock? Keep looking. Then look again—and again...Such was plaintiffs’ plight this week in two consolidated federal lawsuits taking aim at the New York City Department of Education’s COVID-19 vaccine mandates. Since Monday, two judges have come and gone, thanks to their financial ties to pandemic vaccine companies. Meanwhile, a third has vowed to stick around, arguing her investments in Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson are out of date...READ MORE

A federal judge declined Monday to either decide or dismiss a condemned Nevada killer’s lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the state plan for what would its first lethal injection in more than 16 years...U.S. District Judge Richard Boulware II left open Zane Michael Floyd’s case — at least for now — and set an Oct. 11 date for attorneys representing Floyd and the state to return to court in Las Vegas...The judge said he might still close the matter in coming weeks for what he termed “mootness,” since state prison officials testified that they do not have the drugs they would need to conduct an execution. The prison supply of the sedative ketamine expired Feb. 28, and officials said they’ve had trouble procuring more...READ MORE

A Baltimore-based pharmacy and pharmacist have agreed to pay $15,000 in penalty and adhere to “corrective action” in a case that involves allegedly filling dozens of fraudulent prescriptions despite red flags...The United States entered into a consent decree with Ketan K. Dankhara and Falls RX LLC, doing business as Ultra Care Pharmacy Baltimore, which means the case was resolved without Dankhara and the pharmacy admitting guilt...READ MORE