Stomach sickness and a strange smell forced Johnson and Johnson (J&J) division McNeil Consumer Healthcare to finally recall from market a total of 27 products, including Tylenol, Benadryl, Rolaids and Motrin, their second recall this month. The company claims the recalled medicines, manufactured in a Puerto Rico plant, became tainted…
Pzifer’s off-label marketing of their anti-inflammatory drug Bextra will cost the pharmaceutical company a record-breaking $2.3 billion, $102 million of which will be split by five qui tam relators (whistleblowers). This most recent whistleblower lawsuit is the fourth illegal marketing lawsuit Pzifer’s settled since 2002. Of the $2.3B, $1B is…
Costco employees have filed a unpaid wages lawsuit in California stating the company had repeatedly violated the state’s wage and labor law. Costco faces allegations similar to those Tennessee Law Blog reported last year in the nationwide unpaid overtime lawsuits against Wal-Mart stores. Specifically, Costco has allegedly required employees to…
To ensure stimulus package moneys are properly used, the False Claims Act may see its greatest expansion since the False Claims Act Amendments of 1986. The False Claims Act, also known as Lincoln’s Law for the laws established to reduce the rampant fraudulent billing during the Civil War, was created…
Johnson & Johnson executives received bad news last week when the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) stated it would pursue two False Claims Act (whistleblower) lawsuits regarding the heart drug Natrecor. These government fraud whistleblowers’ lawsuits claim Natrecor was illegally marketed for off-label use. According to the qui tam provisions of…
Subprime loan fraud litigation continues to find new classes of plaintiffs. In the latest class actions, lenders are being sued by their investors. People who bought stock in Countrywide Home Loans and New Century Mortgage have brought class action lawsuits against the lenders for their reckless lending activities, according to…
The 2008 fiscal year concluded with $694.5 million settlements from medical device manufacturers and drug pharmaceutical companies accused of misusing government moneys. Of this $694.5 million, $644.5 million came from False Claims lawsuits. These qui tam-driven lawsuits are designed as an incentive for whistleblowers to report their employers’ abuse of…
Medtronic, the major medical device maker who has appeared numerous times this year in Tennessee Law Blog’s defective drugs and medical device blogs, now finds itself in a whistleblower (False Claims) lawsuit filed by a former Tennessee employee Ami Kelley, a Nashville, TN Medtronic attorney. The whistleblower lawsuit alleges Medtronic…
News 4 in Nashville ran a story that Wackenhut has billed the government for security services that were not provided. If this is true they have billed us as tax payers for nothing. I think we would all agree that billing someone for work you do not perform is nothing…