Ropes & Gray Team Secures Dismissal of False Claims Act Suit with Prejudice for Pharmaceutical Client

In The News
November 28, 2013
Attorneys:
Douglas Hallward-Driemeier ,
Albert F. Cacozza, Jr.
A Ropes & Gray team recently secured a victory for its client, a major pharmaceutical company, when a Massachusetts federal judge dismissed with prejudice a False Claims Act qui tam suit filed against the company by a former district manager. The suit alleged off-label promotion of two drugs.

U.S. District Judge Nathaniel M. Gorton found that the suit didn’t identify a “single false claim for reimbursement actually presented . . . upon an identified, purportedly off-label use,” and that the remaining allegations were “insufficient to strengthen the inference that a false claim was actually submitted ‘beyond possibility.’”

The Ropes & Gray team included business & securities litigation partner Doug Hallward-Driemeier and life sciences partner Al Cacozza.