On September 18, 2019, the Department of Justice announced a $21.35 million settlement with compounding pharmacy Patient Care America, PCA executives Patrick Smith and Matthew Smith, and, most notably, the pharmacy’s private equity backer, Riordan, Lewis & Haden Inc. The private equity firm and the pharmacy will fund substantially all of the settlement ($21.036 million).
On
April 3, 2019, in U.S. v. EMD Serono, Inc., CV 16-5594, 2019 WL 1468934 (E.D. Pa. Apr. 3,
2019), District Judge Timothy J. Savage of the
Eastern District of Pennsylvania addressed a matter of first impression within
the Third Circuit: what standard (if any) governs the government’s ability to
dismiss a qui tam case over the objection of relators.
The United States recently filed a False Claims Act Complaint in Intervention against Florida-based compounding pharmacy Patient Care America (“PCA”), two PCA employees, as well as Riordan Lewis & Haden, Inc. (“RLH”), the private equity (“PE”) firm that acquired PCA and helped manage the company. United States ex rel.
On July 9, 2018, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, in U.S. ex rel. Polukoff v. St. Mark’s Hosp., 17-4014, — F. 3d —, 2018 WL 3340513 (10th Cir. July 9, 2018), was faced with an interesting question: whether a physician’s certification of medical necessity could be deemed “false” for purposes of the False Claims Act where no national or local governmental guidelines addressed the propriety or necessity of the physician’s specific services.
