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A Rowland Heights doctor was convicted of second-degree murder…in connection with the overdose deaths of three patients, capping a landmark case that was closely watched by medical and legal professionals across the country…Dr. Hsiu-Ying “Lisa” Tseng, who prosecutors say is the first doctor convicted of murder in the United States for recklessly prescribing drugs to patients, was accused of ignoring “red flags” about her prescribing habits, including the overdose of a patient in her clinic and nine phone calls in less than three years from authorities informing her that patients had died with drugs in their system…. Tseng was one of only a handful of doctors across the country who have faced murder charges for prescribing painkillers that led to a patient's death...

Rosen Law Firm, a global investor rights law firm, announces that it has filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of purchasers of Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, Inc…The lawsuit seeks to recover damages for Valeant investors under the federal securities laws… Defendants issued materially false and misleading statements to investors and/or failed to disclose that:

• deficient internal controls
• relationship with a network of specialty pharmacies used to boost Valeant’s sales of its high-priced drugs
• the use of specialty pharmacies left Valeant vulnerable to increased regulatory risks
• under government scrutiny for its financial assistance programs for patients, pricing decisions and the distribution of its products
• faced the risk of scrutiny over its price increases
• without using specialty pharmacies, Valeant’s financial performance would be negatively impacted
• without using specialty pharmacies, Valeant’s Class Period performance would have been negatively impacted
• true relationship with Philidor and the extent of that relationship
• controlled Philidor
• Valeant’s subsidiary KGA had a secured lien interest on Philidor’s ownership
• engaged in a scheme to manipulate Valeant’s stock price
• public statements were materially false and misleading and/or lacked a reasonable basis at all relevant times. When the true details entered the market, the lawsuit claims that investors suffered damages.

In a victory for the pharmaceutical industry, a federal judge decided the Health Resources and Services Administration cannot enforce a rule that would allow many so-called safety-net hospitals and clinics to obtain orphan drugs at a discount… The decision caps more than two years of feuding between drug makers and the agency over a federal program known as 340B. This requires drug makers to offer discounts of up to 50 percent on all outpatient drugs to hospitals and clinics that serve indigent populations...

Las Vegas physician stood shackled in court and pleaded not guilty Wednesday to drugging and sexually assaulting at least 14 patients, including a 16-year-old girl whose alleged attack was videotaped…An indictment filed last week accuses Bin Minh "Ben" Chung of 24 charges including lewdness, sexual assault, administering a drug in the commission of a felony, and a kidnapping charge that could bring a life sentence if he's convicted.

San Francisco supervisors have accepted a $400,000 payment from Nevada to settle allegations that psychiatric patients were wrongly shipped to California upon discharge...Board of Supervisors Tuesday approved the settlement without comment...San Francisco sued Nevada in September 2013 after the Sacramento Bee published accounts of patients who were discharged from Rawson-Neal Psychiatric Hospital in Las Vegas, and given bus tickets to California cities for further care.

A…nurse who admitted taking kickbacks from a drug company that makes…Subsys (fentanyl sublingual) was pressured by sales representatives to increase her prescribing "so that the Subsys numbers would also increase,"…federal prosecutors charged that Heather Alfonso "continued to increase her prescribing of Subsys and to find more patients for whom she could prescribe the drugs" in exchange for a series of $1,000 kickbacks, totaling $83,000, from the company, Insys Therapeutics…the…narcotic is approved only for cancer patients, some of the patients given Subsys by Alfonso "did not have a cancer diagnosis,"...But "prior authorizations" submitted on behalf of patients falsely represented that they had cancer, misleading insurers into paying for the drug…She…was the highest prescriber in Connecticut in 2013, writing $2.7 million in prescriptions.

In what has turned into a legal trifecta for Pfizer, it has won the dismissal of a lawsuit that claimed the use of the antidepressant Zoloft (sertraline) during pregnancy caused birth defects in a child. The decision comes after Pfizer has won two jury verdicts in recent months over the same claims… Philadelphia state court Judge Mark Bernstein…granted a summary judgment…to Pfizer and dismissed the case…The dismissal came as…Bernstein also denied a request by the plaintiffs to add to the testimony of their expert…there is insufficient epidemiological evidence to link the drug to birth defects...FDA recently asked Pfizer to add information about possible links to birth defects to the Zoloft label.

Novartis agreed to pay about $390 million to wrap up federal kickback claims before the $3.3 billion case went to trial. The Justice Department and a number of U.S. states had sought up to $3.4 billion in damages in the case, which zeroed in on the Swiss drugmaker's relationships with specialty pharmacies…settlement, together with other one-time charges, knocked down Novartis' third-quarter net income, which declined to $1.8 billion…Novartis offered special deals to pharmacies to boost prescriptions of its transplant drug Myfortic (mycophenolic acid) in a head-to-head competition with Roche's CellCept (mycophenolate mofetil). The drugmaker set up another scheme to increase refills of its iron chelation drug Exjade (deferasirox)…

Johnson & Johnson scored a victory in the first case to go to trial over claims that its blockbuster painkiller Tylenol (acetaminophen) causes liver damage and its dosing doesn't adequately account for the risk. A New Jersey jury ruled that the plaintiff did not prove that she took the painkiller… plaintiff …claims that she spent a week in the hospital for liver damage after accidentally overdosing on Extra Strength Tylenol…The news provides J&J/McNeil with an early win as it stares down about 220 lawsuits in state and federal court in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The first federal trial is set for next year in Philadelphia, where about 200 of the cases are consolidated…

..Kentucky pharmacy has agreed to pay $9.25 million to settle allegations that it solicited and received kickbacks from a manufacturer in exchange for promoting a drug with nursing home patients,… PharMerica Corp. resolves claims that it received kickbacks from Abbott Laboratories in exchange for recommending that physicians prescribe the Abbott-manufactured drug Depakote. The federal government alleged the kickbacks were disguised as rebates, educational grants and other financial support....