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Health
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June 25, 2024
GAO Won't Hear Protest Over Canceled DOD Sole-Source Deal
The U.S. Government Accountability Office has rejected a protest over the Defense Health Agency canceling a company's contract to instead seek competitive bids, saying the company ultimately sought the award of a sole-source deal, a position the watchdog won't support.
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June 24, 2024
NYC Pharmacy Owners Get Jail Time For $18M Med Fraud
Two brothers who own several New York pharmacies will each have to pay over $18 million in restitution in addition to serving jail time for submitting fraudulent claims to Medicare for pricey cancer medication and funneling illicit proceeds through several shell companies, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Monday.
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June 24, 2024
Doctor Left Text Trail Describing NBA Fraud Scheme, Jury Told
Prosecutors told a Manhattan federal jury that a Seattle medical professional sent a series of text messages detailing a plan to submit fraudulent claims to an NBA healthcare plan to obtain payouts, kicking off a second trial over the alleged scheme.
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June 24, 2024
LA Schools Says Pseudoscience Infected 9th Circ. Vax Ruling
The Los Angeles Unified School District said Friday that a split Ninth Circuit panel leaned on pseudoscience when ruling that a rescinded employee COVID-19 vaccination mandate implicated the right of district employees to refuse medical treatment, urging an en banc panel to correct the "fatally flawed" decision.
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June 24, 2024
Harvard Fertility Doctor Settles Secret-Impregnation Claim
A fertility doctor and longtime Harvard Medical School professor has settled claims that he secretly used his own sperm to impregnate a patient in 1980, according to a Monday court filing.
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June 24, 2024
Wage Law Doesn't Apply To $32M In PPE Sales, NJ Panel Says
An employee who sold more than $32 million in personal protective equipment during three months of the COVID-19 pandemic is not entitled to $1.3 million in commissions under the New Jersey Wage Payment Law, because the sales did not fall under her normal role and are instead "supplementary incentives," a state appeals panel ruled Monday.
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June 24, 2024
Ark. AG Sues Pharmacy Benefit Managers Over Opioids
The Arkansas attorney general said Monday that he had sued pharmacy benefit managers Optum Inc. and Express Scripts Inc. in state court, claiming they contributed to the opioid crisis and profited from the drug epidemic.
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June 24, 2024
Suit Over Medical Screws Filed Too Late, Texas Panel Finds
A Texas appeals court won't revive a woman's suit against BioPro Inc. alleging that surgical screws used in her feet were defective, saying the evidence establishes that she filed her suit after the two-year statute of limitations had expired.
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June 24, 2024
Jurisdictional Discovery Ordered In NJ COVID Test Fraud Suit
A New Jersey federal court has denied without prejudice a dismissal bid and ordered "tightly-targeted and prompt jurisdictional discovery" in a Garden State medical supply business' complaint accusing a Texas attorney and his solo practice of aiding in an alleged $2.45 million fraud scheme involving COVID-19 test kits that were never delivered.
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June 24, 2024
Catching Up With Delaware's Chancery Court
Amendments to Delaware's General Corporation Law topped the news out of the Court of Chancery again last week, as the hotly contested measure sailed through the state's legislature. Tesla and its shareholders continued their tug-of-war over attorney fees for Chancery litigation about Elon Musk's pay package, and new cases were filed involving biotechs, car rental companies, workout platforms, telecom towers, and a cargo ship fire in Brazil.
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June 24, 2024
Defense Contractor Gresham Inks $83M SPAC Merger
Defense contractor Gresham Worldwide Inc. and special-purpose acquisition company Ault Disruptive Technologies Corp. agreed Monday to merge in a deal that values Gresham at $83 million and enlarges the company's profile, steered by two law firms.
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June 24, 2024
Justices Pass On Conn. School Vaccine Mandate Fight
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to review a Second Circuit decision that largely upheld the dismissal of a suit challenging a Connecticut law passed during the COVID-19 pandemic that revoked religious exemptions to student vaccine mandates.
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June 24, 2024
$2.9M Health Co. Data Breach Settlement Gets Final Approval
A Michigan federal judge has given final approval to a $2.9 million deal for a maker of prosthetics and orthotics to settle claims the company didn't protect customers' sensitive information from a cyberattack.
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June 24, 2024
Justices Pass On Rutgers COVID-19 Vax Mandate Case
The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Monday to review a split Third Circuit ruling that Rutgers University students cannot challenge the school's COVID-19 vaccine policy because, under the high court's 1905 precedent in Jacobson v. Massachusetts, there is no fundamental right to refuse vaccinations.
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June 24, 2024
Blumenauer Predicts Cannabis Rescheduling Before Year-End
U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., a longtime champion of cannabis reform in Congress who is retiring this year, told cannabis attorneys on Monday that he was optimistic marijuana would be moved to Schedule III under the federal Controlled Substances Act before the end of the year.
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June 24, 2024
High Court To Review State Gender Care Bans
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to review a Sixth Circuit decision that allowed Tennessee to keep in place a new ban on gender-affirming care for minors.
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June 24, 2024
Justices Won't Hear Objections To $2.67B BCBS Deal
The U.S. Supreme Court refused on Monday to review Home Depot's challenge of a $2.67 billion settlement in antitrust litigation targeting Blue Cross Blue Shield, along with a separate challenge of the attorney fees awarded for the deal.
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June 21, 2024
Estate Of Alzheimer's Patient Awarded $600K In NJ Death Case
A New Jersey jury awarded $600,000 to the family of a psychiatric hospital patient with Alzheimer's who died after sustaining several fractures and a traumatic brain injury at the facility, a Philadelphia law firm announced Friday.
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June 21, 2024
Texas Medical Board Adopts Abortion Records Requirement
Texas doctors who determine that an abortion is necessary during a pregnant patient's health crisis will face new recordkeeping requirements under a final rule issued Friday by the state's medical board.
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June 21, 2024
4th Circ. Revives TCPA Suit Over Fax Promoting Free Webinar
A chiropractic office in Ohio on Friday succeeded in reviving its putative class action against a healthcare technology company accused of sending junk faxes, with the Fourth Circuit finding the communication counts as an unsolicited advertisement under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.
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June 21, 2024
Billing Report Order Was 'Overly Broad' In Injury Suit, Panel Says
A Georgia appeals court on Friday vacated a trial court order requiring a medical provider and its claims manager to produce a database report with financial and billing information during discovery in a car accident case, saying the order was overly broad and didn't do enough to protect the companies' confidential information.
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June 21, 2024
Recovery Home Co. Sues Over Denial By Town's Zoning Panel
A New Jersey township's zoning board has been accused in New Jersey federal court of discriminating against recovering drug addicts and alcoholics by refusing to allow a recovery home to continue to operate in a residential area.
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June 21, 2024
GAO Says CMS Didn't Address Contractor Conflict Of Interest
The U.S. Government Accountability Office has backed a protest over a $30.65 million Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services analytics task order, saying CMS failed to properly account for a conflict of interest involving a proposed subcontractor for the awardee.
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June 21, 2024
Ontrak Founder Convicted In Novel Insider Trading Case
A California federal jury found Ontrak founder and former CEO Terren Peizer guilty on Friday of three counts of insider trading, following a first-of-its-kind prosecution on allegations he dumped $20 million of shares in the healthcare company after discovering its biggest client was going to terminate their deal.
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June 21, 2024
Seton Hall Denies Fault For Student's Death In COVID Isolation
Seton Hall University is asking a federal court to dismiss a wrongful death suit brought by the family of a student who died in mandatory isolation in her dorm room after testing positive for COVID-19 and then having an epileptic seizure.
Expert Analysis
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Class Actions At The Circuit Courts: May Lessons
In this month's review of class action appeals, Mitchell Engel at Shook Hardy discusses four notable circuit court decisions on topics from automobile insurance to securities — and provides key takeaways for counsel on issues including circuit-specific ascertainability requirements and how to conduct a Daubert analysis prior to class certification.
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Perspectives
Trauma-Informed Legal Approaches For Pro Bono Attorneys
As National Trauma Awareness Month ends, pro bono attorneys should nevertheless continue to acknowledge the mental and physical effects of trauma, allowing them to better represent clients, and protect themselves from compassion fatigue and burnout, say Katherine Cronin at Stinson and Katharine Manning at Blackbird.
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Series
Playing Music Makes Me A Better Lawyer
My deep and passionate involvement in playing, writing and producing music equipped me with skills — like creativity, improvisation and problem-solving — that contribute to the success of my legal career, says attorney Kenneth Greene.
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3rd Circ.'s Geico Ruling May Encourage Healthcare Arbitration
The Third Circuit's recent decision in Geico v. Mount Prospect, finding that claims under New Jersey's Insurance Fraud Prevention Act can be arbitrated, strengthens arbitration as a viable alternative to litigation, even though it is not necessarily always a more favorable forum, say Khaled Klele and Jessica Osterlof at McCarter & English.
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Proposed Cannabis Reschedule Sidesteps State Law Effects
The U.S. Department of Justice's recent proposal to move cannabis to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act provides certain benefits, but its failure to address how the rescheduling would interact with existing state cannabis laws disappointed industry participants hoping for clarity on this crucial question, says Ian Stewart at Wilson Elser.
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How Attys Can Avoid Pitfalls When Withdrawing From A Case
The Trump campaign's recent scuffle over its bid to replace its counsel in a pregnancy retaliation suit offers a chance to remind attorneys that many troubles inherent in withdrawing from a case can be mitigated or entirely avoided by communicating with clients openly and frequently, says Christopher Konneker at Orsinger Nelson.
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Using A Children's Book Approach In Firm Marketing Content
From “The Giving Tree” to “Where the Wild Things Are,” most children’s books are easy to remember because they use simple words and numbers to tell stories with a human impact — a formula law firms should emulate in their marketing content to stay front of mind for potential clients, says Seema Desai Maglio at The Found Word.
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A Changing Regulatory Landscape For Weight Loss Drugs
As drugs originally approved to treat diabetes become increasingly popular for weight loss purposes, federal and state regulators and payors are increasing their focus on how these drugs are prescribed, and industry participants should pay close attention to rapidly evolving compliance requirements, say attorneys at Goodwin.
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Opioid Suits Offer Case Study In Abatement Expert Testimony
Settlements in the opioid multidistrict litigation provide useful insight into leveraging expert discovery on abatement in public nuisance cases, and would not have been successful without testimony on the costs necessary to lessen the harms of the opioid crisis, says David Burnett at DiCello Levitt.
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Patent Lessons From 4 Federal Circuit Reversals In April
Four Federal Circuit decisions in April that reversed or vacated underlying rulings provide a number of takeaways, including that obviousness analysis requires a flexible approach, that an invalidity issue of an expired patent can be moot, and more, say Denise De Mory and Li Guo at Bunsow De Mory.
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Opinion
USPTO's Proposed Disclaimer Rule Would Harm Inventors
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s recently proposed rule on terminal disclaimers will make the patent system less available to inventors and will unfairly favor defendants in litigation, say Stephen Schreiner at Carmichael IP and Sarah Tsou at Omni Bridgeway.
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Series
Being An EMT Makes Me A Better Lawyer
While some of my experiences as an emergency medical technician have been unusually painful and searing, the skills I’ve learned — such as triage, empathy and preparedness — are just as useful in my work as a restructuring lawyer, says Marshall Huebner at Davis Polk.
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How HHS Discrimination Rule Affects Gender-Affirming Care
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' new final rule, which reinterprets the Affordable Care Act's anti-discrimination provision, greatly clarifies protections for gender-affirming care and will require compliance considerations from sponsors and administrators of most group health plans, say attorneys at McDermott.
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Opinion
'Natural Person' Or Not, AI-Made IP Deserves Protection
The entire legal edifice rests on a determination that an artificial system is not a so-called natural person, and although this may appear to be straightforward on its face, rapid advances in technology may soon force us to revisit our understanding of a natural person, says Manav Das at McDonnell Boehnen.
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Lessons On Challenging Class Plaintiffs' Expert Testimony
In class actions seeking damages, plaintiffs are increasingly using expert opinions to establish predominance, but several recent rulings from California federal courts shed light on how defendants can respond, say Jennifer Romano and Raija Horstman at Crowell & Moring.