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A Nevada jury has awarded TeamHealth $60 million in punitive damages as part of an ongoing legal spat between the physician staffing firm and health insurance giant UnitedHealthcare... jury ruled late last month that the insurer underpaid emergency physicians at three TeamHealth affiliates in the state and at the time awarded $2.65 million in compensatory damages...Nine additional, similar lawsuits are pending in other states, and TeamHealth is expecting the Nevada results to drive momentum in those other cases...“Today’s ruling that United must pay $60 million in punitive damages sets a critical precedent that large health insurers can’t underpay frontline doctors for lifesaving care,” said TeamHealth President and CEO Leif Murphy in a statement. “We look forward to continuing the fight against United in nine future cases that will be decided on the same set of facts.”...

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CVS, Walgreens and Walmart pharmacies recklessly distributed massive amounts of pain pills in two Ohio counties, a federal jury said...in a verdict that could set the tone for U.S. city and county governments that want to hold pharmacies accountable for their roles in the opioid crisis...Lake and Trumbull counties blamed the three chain pharmacies for not stopping the flood of pills that caused hundreds of overdose deaths and cost each of the two counties about $1 billion, their attorney said...The counties were able to convince the jury that the pharmacies played an outsized role in creating a public nuisance in the way they dispensed pain medication into their communities...READ MORE

A federal judge found drug companies cannot unilaterally restrict sales of products discounted under the 340B program to contract pharmacies...But a separate ruling found that manufacturers don’t have to provide discounts...The opinions...are the latest in a legal fight between six drugmakers and the Biden administration over whether they must offer discounted products to contract pharmacies. Federal judges issued separate rulings in lawsuits filed by Novo Nordisk, Sanofi, Novartis and United Therapeutics...READ MORE

...Johnson & Johnson has made sweeping moves to resolve a mountain of litigation involving the safety and marketing of its opioid and talc products...J&J revealed it has settled liability claims surrounding its antipsychotic drug Risperdal...The agreement resolves approximately 9,000 cases the company faced from those who claimed Risperdal caused breast tissue development in males, a condition called gynecomastia...READ MORE

A former Immunomedics executive was charged with tipping his partner and several relatives of confidential information that the biotech's then-experimental breast cancer drug had succeeded in a clinical trial, according to a suit filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission in New Jersey district court...Usama Malik, Immunomedics' chief financial officer from 2017 until late 2020, learned the drug, now sold as Trodelvy, benefited patients in the late-stage study. Within hours of being told of the trial's success, the SEC charges said, Malik relayed the news to his former girlfriend Lauren Wood and three relatives, who subsequently bought shares in Immunomedics before the results were disclosed publicly...READMORE

The National Association of Chain Drug Stores is hailing a decision by the Eighth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals...In the case — Pharmaceutical Care Management Association v. Wehbi — the Eighth Circuit relied on the U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling in Rutledge v. Pharmaceutical Care Management Association in determining that all provisions in the North Dakota statute, which seek to regulate the relationship between pharmacy benefits managers and pharmacies, were not preempted by the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act...Importantly, the Court also found that most provisions in the North Dakota law were not preempted by Medicare Part D and outright rejected the PBMs’ argument that they could not be regulated in the federal or state arenas...READ MORE

A state attorney asked a federal judge Friday for a quick hearing and ruling about the constitutionality of Nevada’s execution procedure, saying a drug that officials want to use for condemned killer Zane Floyd’s lethal injection will expire in late February...“We need to continue to expedite this case,” Chief Deputy Nevada Attorney General Randall Gilmer told the judge, who plans at least three days of hearings this month and possibly more next month amid challenges by Floyd’s attorneys of the method, the personnel and the drugs that would be used to kill him...Floyd, a convicted mass killer, is fighting on several fronts to avoid becoming the first Nevada inmate put to death in 15 years...READ MORE

With a crucial drug in the state’s supply of lethal injection materials set to expire at the end of February, Nevada officials are pressing forward in their attempt to execute death row inmate Zane Floyd, even as lawyers for Floyd are imploring the court to explore alternative methods, such as a firing squad...The experts, including multiple anesthesiologists who have experience with the drugs involved in the protocol, testified that the untried drug cocktail could result in suffering or an agonizing death...READ MORE

The Oklahoma Supreme Court...overturned a $465 million opioid ruling against drugmaker Johnson & Johnson, finding that a lower court wrongly interpreted the state’s public nuisance law in the first case of its kind in the U.S. to go to trial...The ruling was the second blow this month to a government case that used a similar approach to try to hold drugmakers responsible for the national epidemic of opioid abuse. Public nuisance claims are at the heart of some 3,000 lawsuits brought by state and local governments against drugmakers, distribution companies and pharmacies, but it’s not clear that the legal theory is in trouble with so many more cases queued up to test it...READ MORE

The pharmaceutical industry scored a muted win in its long-running feud with the Department of Health and Human Services over 340B program discounts...when a federal court judge granted Eli Lilly’s bid to vacate two administrative actions aimed at drugmakers...U.S. District Court...ruled that a...advisory opinion from HHS’ Office of the General Counsel and a May enforcement letter from the Health Resources and Services Administration were “arbitrary and capricious” and in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act...the judge determined that Lilly and other drug manufacturers are not permitted under the current 340B statute “to impose unilateral extra-statutory restrictions on its offer to sell 340B drugs to covered entities utilizing multiple contract pharmacy arrangements.”...READ MORE