This week is scary through and through.  We in the mid-Atlantic region have confronted Frankenstorm, which turned our front yard into a post-apocalyptic scene.  We would not be a bit surprised to espy a zombie lurking behind the overturned pink flamingos.  Then there’s the new jobs report, slated to come out in a few days.  That could be deadly for one of the presidential candidates. There will be a Million Muppet March on Washington this weekend.  Grover always frightened us.  Plus, as you may have heard, Big Bird has lately been on the warpath.  But we’d rather be pecked to death by Big Bird than endure yet another country music award show, which graces a network’s airwaves this week. (Honestly, can we ever go a fortnight without another of those silly congrat-fests with big hair, bad jokes, and twangy jingoism?  Just asking).  And today is Halloween.
We’re not fans of the modern slasher flicks.  But in our tyke-dom we watched the Creature Features on Saturday nights.  The old Universal Pictures monster movies were our favorites.  Frankenstein, The Wolfman, Dracula, etc. offered good, clean, mildly spooky fun.   Improbable terrors threatened and were inevitably defeated, but there was usually a hint at the end that the ghouls might return.  “We belong dead,” the monster says at the end of Bride of Frankenstein, but he would visit us many times, even to pal around with Abbott and Costello. Dracula was always arising again from the grave.  And poor Lawrence Talbot would once more stare at the full moon and feel his hair and nails grow lupine.  The Blob, which was filmed in Philly suburbs, transforms the scripted “The End” into a big question mark.
Today’s case is like a near death experience.  The theory of the plaintiff (in a qui tam suit the proper nomenclature is “the relator”) in United States ex rel. Watson v. King-Vassel et al, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 152496 (E.D. Wisconsin Oct. 23, 2012), is that a doctor can be liable under the False Claims Act for prescribing a drug off-label.  The court ends up dismissing the case, but does not quite administer the authoritative stake in the heart we’d like to see.   As with Freddie or Jason, we might not have seen the last of this nasty apparition.
The relator, Dr. Watson, filed a qui tam action alleging that another doctor, named King-Vassel, violated the federal False Claims Act by prescribing medications off-label.   Dr. Watson also named other medical providers on a respondeat superior theory, though there was not an ounce of evidence to support that theory (more on that later).  The case was initially sealed while the United States and the state of Wisconsin determined whether to intervene.  They decided not to do so, which is usually, though not always, indicative of a weak case.  It certainly was the case here.Continue Reading Qui Tam Off-label Trick or Treat