Third party payer plaintiffs (mostly insurance companies and union welfare funds in unholy alliance with plaintiff lawyers), have not been doing very well with their economic loss claims against (mostly) pharmaceutical companies – at least outside the rogue First Circuit − as anyone following our TPP topic posts can attest. So they’ve tried something new,
We’re a bit too tired from going late into the evening watching the Oscars to say much of anything pithy today. We’ll just complain. Argo was a very good movie. But Best Picture good? Maybe, but maybe not. It’s certainly not as shaky as last year’s pick, The Artist. Cute and different doesn’t mean best. Does anyone remember Crash winning best picture for 2005? How the heck did that happen? That might not even have been a good movie, no less best. And Shakespeare In Love? How does its victory over Saving Private Ryan look in retrospect?
Against these historic mistakes, the selection of Argo isn’t bad. As we said, it really was a good movie. A historically based movie is unquestionably good when it can get your teen-aged son to look at you with wide eyes during the last 20 minutes and say, “Man, this is intense.” Its selection as Best Picture also created a second, “hey, can you believe Ben Affleck just won an Oscar” moment. Those are always fun. He’s gotten pretty good at making movies. The Town was a good one too. So we’re really not complaining about Argo.
This is more about Django Unchained. We knew it never had a chance to win. Quentin Tarantino makes unusual movies. They’re loaded with violence, cursing and one odd circumstance piled on top of or backed into another. And Tarantino himself sometimes comes off as a know-it-all when it comes to cinema. But, man, what a move that was. It must have been incredibly difficult to craft a movie about such a painful part of our history and yet have it at once be action-packed, terrifying, funny, exhausting, exhilarating, realistic, cartoonish, unpredictable and wonderfully predictable – and then to wrap it all up in a spaghetti western. Who would even think to do such a thing, no less accomplish it? For those of you who saw it, wasn’t it great to cheer Django on as he whipped the heck out of his former slave master? We bet you’d never thought you’d get that experience at a movie. Or wasn’t it a surreal movie-going moment to laugh along with the entire crowd as the KKK members complained about the guy who improperly cut the eye holes into their hoods? And then be thrilled when Django shoots the KKK leader, Big Daddy (Don Johnson), off his horse. Tarantino doesn’t make the type of movie that gets selected as Best Picture. The Academy seems more comfortable throwing him a Best Screenplay award from time to time instead. But you’ll likely never see another movie like that one again. And you’ll definitely see more Argos. Maybe Django Unchained should have been picked.
Who knows? McConnell thinks a lot about these things and sees all the Best Picture nominees. He’ll probably straighten this all out on Wednesday.
Now for your entertainment . . . . a third-party-payer case called Employer Teamsters-Local Nos. 175/505 Health and Welfare Trust Fund v. Bristol Myers Squibb Co., No. 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 21589 (S.D. W.Va. Jan. 29, 2013). As cases go, if you like courts dismissing plaintiffs’ claims for all sorts of reasons, this one should keep your attention.Continue Reading A Solid Decision Dismissing Third Party Payer Claims — And a Mundane Oscar Decision
We’ve chronicled many times the largely unsuccessful attempts of third-party payers (in unholy alliance with plaintiffs’ lawyers) to sue derivatively over alleged off-label promotion of prescription drugs and medical devices. Basically, these insurers, having already set their premiums and recovered for their expenses, take “free shots” at trying to get money back for what are
In a pair of precedential opinions, the Third Circuit affirmed today the dismissal – for lack of standing- of the Intron off-label promotion RICO class action.
See: In Re: Schering Plough Corp. Intron/Temodar Consumer Class Action, No. 10-3046, 3047, slip op. (3d Cir. May 16, 2012), and In Re: Schering Plough Corp. Intron/Temodar Consumer
Yesterday, the Eleventh Circuit affirmed dismissal – for failure to state a claim – of TPP economic loss claims in the Trasylol litigation. See Southeast Laborers Health & Welfare Fund v. Bayer Corp., No. 10-13196, ___ Fed. Appx. ___, slip op. (11th Cir. Oct. 24, 2011). That’s good news for our clients and bad
We already posted once today about third party payers and class actions, so this will be short. In the Neurontin litigation certification of a purported nationwide class of TPPs was recently denied (again) in In re Neurontin Marketing & Sales Practices Litigation, MDL 1629, slip op. (D. Mass. May 17, 2011). The rationale, which the court
Like everybody else we took a look at the Supreme Court’s decision in AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, slip op., 131 S. Ct. 1740 (U.S. 2011), on the Federal Arbitration Act’s preemption of state law limiting the enforceability of class action waivers. However, just as the Capitol Steps’ first reaction to a political scandal is “what rhymes with it?” our first reaction to major new precedent is “is it useful in drug/device litigation.”
Our reaction to AT&T Mobility is “maybe.” Reading the case, we don’t think that it’s possible to restrict it’s scope just to class-action-based arbitrations, which is it’s precise factual context. Rather, since the motivating force behind FAA preemption is the “liberal federal policy favoring arbitration,” 131 S. Ct. at 1745, we’d have to say that state law purporting to invalidate limitations on non-arbitration class actions is a fortiori preempted. By that we mean that, if contractual limits on class actions in arbitration are enforceable under the FAA, given its arbitration-friendly policy, then contractual limits on class actions outside of arbitration are even more favored, since litigated class actions are even more invasive of arbitration rights.
So we think that AT&T Mobility invalidates all state law attempts to obstruct arbitration waivers involving class actions, whether the state is attempting to preserve class action in or out of arbitration.Continue Reading AT&T v. Concepcion in Drug/Device Cases?
It’s not a complete win, but 8 out of 9 ain’t bad.
In Kinetic Co. v. Medtronic, Inc., No. 08-CV-6062, slip op. (D. Minn. April 19, 2011), a third-party payer filed suit over a recalled implantable cardiac defibrillator (“ICD”). In a classic example of “no good deed goes unpunished,” after Medtronic went above and beyond the terms of the recall, by both withdrawing the device from the market and offering to pay patients to replace it, and got sued by the TPP plaintiff for not also paying it – in other words, for not paying for everything twice because the TPP never sought to get the money that Medtronic paid patients. Ironically, the TPP’s double-dipping claim was all that survived.
That’s because Medtronic won – yet again – on preemption, and on judgment on the pleadings (meaning no discovery expense). In so doing it effectively wiped from the books one of the worst pre-Riegel preemption decisions around, In re Medtronic, Inc. Implantable Defibrillators Litigation, 465 F. Supp.2d 886 (D. Minn. 2006), against which we railed in one of our earliest posts. See Kinetic, slip op. at 3 n.3 (refusing to give earlier Medtronic case collateral estoppel effect because of subsequent, controlling preemption authority).
Most of the TPP’s claims were the same sorts of claims we’ve seen in similar suits across the country. TPP claims are nothing if not redundant. Here, they were: (1) false advertising, (2) deceptive trade practices, (3) consumer fraud under Minnesota law, (4) consumer fraud under every other state’s law, (5) unjust enrichment, (6) breach of express warranty, (7) breach of implied warranty, (8) breach of “assumed” contractual obligation, and (9) misrepresentation by omission. Slip op. at 2-3.Continue Reading Another Medtronic Preemption Win
History Shows Again And Again How Judges Point Out The Folly Of TPPs
If insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, then third party payers suing drug manufacturers in New Jersey for alleged overpayments allegedly caused by various purported sins are certifiably crazy. If the on-label meds don’t work, perhaps they should try something off label.
If that doesn’t work, then the defendants might want to think about Rule 11, given how widely these claims have been rejected.
The latest installment of TPP smackdown is District 1199P Health & Welfare Plan v. Janssen, L.P., slip op. (D.N.J. March 20, 2011). It’s the usual dross – alleged off-label marketing of a drug (this time, Risperdal), and the TPPs claim they should get their money back even though the drug in all likelihood helped the patients for whom it was prescribed (indeed, some of the uses were later approved by FDA).
The theories are also familiar – RICO and assorted state-law economic-loss-only claims.
The result is also familiar. Motion to dismiss granted.Continue Reading A Godzilla Of A New Third Party Payer Dismissal