Jury: Medtronic owes bone cement acquisition $15M
May 12, 2014 by Brad Perriello
Medtronic owes $15.4 million to bone cement maker Pabban Development for breaking the terms their 2008 acquisition deal, a federal jury in California ruled last week.
Irvine, Calif.-based Pabban, which developed a bone cement system for spinal surgeries called Natrix, claimed the technology had key improvements over other bone cements at the time, according to court documents. That aroused Medtronic’s interest after the Federal Trade Commission ruled that its July 2007 acquisition of Kyphon could only go through if Kyphon sold off its bone cement delivery system, according to the documents (Johnson DePuy subsidiary acquired the Kyphon system for roughly $100 million in 2008, according to the documents). Read more
North Carolina DA probes Cardiovascular Devices
May 12, 2014 by Brad Perriello
Cardiovascular Systems late last week became the latest medical device company to reveal a federal probe into possible marketing or False Claims Act violations.
CSI revealed late Friday that the district attorney for western North Carolina is conducting an investigation “to determine whether the company has violated the False Claims Act, resulting in the submission of false claims to federal and state health care programs, including Medicare and Medicaid.” Read more
Negligence claims stand in Medtronic Infuse lawsuits
May 14, 2014 by Brad Perriello
Medtronic must face claims of fraud and negligence in a pair of lawsuits filed over its controversial Infuse bone-growth product, a California federal judge ruled yesterday.
Plaintiffs Richard Eidson and Scott and April Bell sued Medtronic in 2013, alleging that the company “embarked on a vigorous campaign to promote off-label uses of Infuse” despite knowing since 1999 “that medical studies had found evidence of severe side effects associated with the off-label use of Infuse, particularly excessive bone growth,” according to court documents. Read more
Judge slaps sanction on J&J's lawyers in Ethicon pelvic mesh case
May 15, 2014 by Brad Perriello
A federal judge sanctioned a law firm representing Johnson & Johnson’s Ethicon subsidiary in some of the 18,000 cases it’s facing over pelvic mesh products in West Virginia, finding that Drinker Biddle & Reath improperly removed 1 of the lawsuits from a Pennsylvania state court.
Judge Joseph Goodwin, who’s overseeing multi-district litigation in the U.S. District Court for Southern West Virginia that covers some 55,000 cases against a raft of pelvic mesh makers, chastised the firm’s attorneys for a strategy seemingly “calculated to keep these cases out of state court for as long as possible and to waste the court’s time and the plaintiff’s resources,” according to court documents. Read more
Stryker must face class action employment claims
May 15, 2014 by Brad Perriello
Stryker failed to convince a California federal judge last month that it had no employment relationship with a former sales rep working for its Howmedica subsidiary.
Tanner Trosper, the sales rep, sued Stryker and Howmedica last year, alleging failure to reimburse employees for business-related expenses and failing to have a reimbursement policy in place, as required by California law, according to court documents. Stryker asked Judge Lucy Koh of the U.S. District Court for Northern California to dismiss the putative class action, arguing that ” Trosper has failed to produce evidence demonstrating the existence of an employment relationship between Trosper and Stryker,” according to the documents. Read more