Janssen Biotech Inc. must hand over its communications with federal agencies regarding a former employee’s claims filed on behalf of the government that the company paid doctors kickbacks to boost its drug sales, a Boston federal judge ordered.

Chief U.S. Magistrate Judge M. Page Kelley settled a crossfire of discovery motions in an order Thursday that found Janssen’s communications with the federal government about the claims were “undeniably relevant and not privileged” and should be handed over to relator Julie Long.

The ruling gives Janssen two weeks to provide Long its communications with the U.S. Department of Justice, the inspector general of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

The biotech was also ordered to produce contracts it had with Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP which disclose how much Janssen paid the firm to run free phone seminars for physicians about changes in Medicare rates.

. . .

The discovery orders issued Thursday followed Long’s insistence that Janssen was “stonewalling” her on the case by delaying court-ordered production plans. But Janssen had countered that Long was the one causing “unnecessary delays” with her burdensome demands.

Long’s attorney Theodore Leopold of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC said in a statement Friday that his client is cleared with the ruling.

“We look forward to getting the long-delayed document production and relevant names of those individuals involved with the decision-making that has led to this litigation,” Leopold said.

Representatives for Janssen were not immediately available for comment on Friday.

Julie Long is represented by Jonathan Shapiro and Lynn G. Weissberg of Stern Shapiro Weissberg & Garin and Casey M. Preston, Gary L. Azorsky, Jeanne A. Markey, Leslie Kroeger, Theodore Jon Leopold, Diana L. Martin and Poorad Razavi of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC.

Read the article on Law360.

An Illinois federal judge refused to free two Casino Queen founders and a former president from a lawsuit by workers alleging the executives siphoned millions from the workers’ retirement savings to buy stock in the company’s holding firm, saying he needs more information before making any decisions.

On Monday, U.S. District Judge David W. Dugan denied founders Charles Bidwell III and Timothy J. Rand’s motion to dismiss the proposed class action by employee stock ownership plan participants Tom Hensiek, Jason Gill and Lillian Wrobel. The judge also rejected former president James G. Koman’s motion for judgment on the pleadings in the Employee Retirement Income Security Act lawsuit.

The Casino Queen workers said they didn’t learn of the executives’ 2012 transaction, in which the workers say the ESOP overpaid for the newly formed casino holding company’s stock in a $170 million purchase, until 2019 because they were provided false information regarding the deal and the holding company’s stock prices.

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”We are very pleased that the court has denied — yet again — dispositive motions filed by defendants,” Michelle C. Yau, who represents the ESOP participants, told Law360 in a statement. “My clients look forward to trial where they get a chance to prove their claims after years of delay by defendants.”

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The casino employees are represented by Colleen R. Smith, John Stokes, Peter K. Stris, Rachana Pathak, Shaun Martin and Victor O’Connell of Stris & Maher LLP and Ryan Wheeler and Michelle C. Yau of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC.

Read on Law360.

A class action lawsuit alleging a suburban beauty supply distributor and staffing agencies enforced discriminatory practices against Black workers is moving forward.

Named plaintiffs Joe Eagle, Michael Keys, James Zollicoffer and Evan Franklin filed suit alleging that Vee Pak, located in Countryside and Hodgkins, had a policy that favored hiring Latino workers over Black applicants, and instructed several staffing agencies to implement that policy when filling temporary positions in its warehouse. The manufacturing facilities had workers fill and cap bottles and tubes for personal-care and drug companies.

The legal action dates back to 2012, when Eagle, Keys, Zollicoffer and Franklin, who are Black, first brought the putative class action individually and on behalf of other Black temp workers allegedly similarly denied work, against Vee Pak and three staffing agencies, Alternative Staffing, Personnel Staffing Group and Staffing Network, that allegedly implemented Vee Pak’s alleged discriminatory policy. Alternative Staffing and Personnel Staffing Group, which does business as Most Valuable Personnel, or MVP, have settled the claims against them; Vee Pak and the third staffing agency, Staffing Network, remain in the case.

Plaintiffs moved to certify a class of Black workers who sought, but were denied, work assignments at the three staffing agencies from which they could have been referred to Vee Pak between 2011 and 2015.

The plaintiffs’ motion for class certification was granted Feb. 23 by U.S. District Judge John Tharp in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago. Eagle and Keys were appointed as staffing network subclass representatives, Zollicoffer as MVP subclass representative, and Franklin as ASI subclass representative.

The court appointed attorneys Joseph M. Sellers and Harini Srinivasan, of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, of Washington, D.C.; Christopher J. Williams, of National Legal Advocacy Network, of Chicago; and Christopher J. Wilmes and Caryn C. Lederer, of Hughes Socol Piers Resnick & Dym, of Chicago, as class counsel.

Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp. has been hit with another proposed class action over its allegedly anti-competitive practice of bundling several of its vaccines for children to maintain its monopoly power in the rotavirus vaccine market, this time brought by third-party payors who indirectly paid for or reimbursed rotavirus vaccines.

In the suit filed Friday, Baltimore’s mayor and City Council claim that Merck had already bundled several of its pediatric vaccines before GlaxoSmithKline PLC released its Rotarix vaccine. However, as it prepared for GSK’s introduction of the competing rotavirus vaccine, Merck added a condition to its contracts requiring customers to buy all or nearly all of their pediatric rotavirus vaccines from Merck. If they didn’t, customers would face substantial price penalties on all other bundled Merck vaccines, according to the complaint.

That allowed Merck to charge supracompetitive prices to purchasers of its vaccines, Baltimore said. And those prices are passed along to patients and third-party payors, such as the city and other putative class members, it said.

“Due to the Merck bundle, instead of significantly decreasing the price of RotaTeq when GSK entered the market, as would normally be expected to result from competitive entry into a monopoly market, Merck has maintained the price of RotaTeq at supracompetitive levels, actually increasing its list price despite facing competition from GSK,” the city said.

And as a result, the city and others have paid — and continue to pay — artificially inflated prices for the rotavirus vaccines, Baltimore added.

Baltimore said it’s suing on behalf of hundreds of thousands of third-party payors in so-called “repealer jurisdictions,” or states or districts that have repealed the bar on indirect purchaser plaintiffs seeking recovery. Those jurisdictions include California, Michigan, Nebraska, Oregon, New York and the District of Columbia, among others.

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Baltimore is represented by Eric L. Cramer, Russell D. Paul, David Langer and Daniel J. Walker of Berger Montague PC, Daniel H. Silverman, Leonardo Chingcuanco and Sharon K. Robertson of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC and Ebony Thompson and Jane Lewis of the City of Baltimore’s Department of Law.

Read the complete article on Law360.

WASHINGTON—House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) today is launching an investigation into pharmacy benefit managers’ (PBM) tactics that are harming patient care and increasing costs for consumers. Chairman Comer is calling on senior officials at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and the Defense Health Agency (DHA) for documents and communications to determine the extent PBMs’ tactics impact healthcare programs administered by the federal government. Additionally, Chairman Comer is calling on the largest PBMs—CVS Caremark, Express Scripts, and OptumRx—to provide documents, communications, and information related to their practices that are distorting the pharmaceutical market and limiting high quality care for patients.

“Pharmacy Benefit Managers’ anticompetitive tactics are driving up health care costs for Americans and harming patient care. Federal agencies administering health care programs for seniors, active-duty military, and federal employees rely on PBMs as middlemen to set drug prices, which opens the door to government waste at the expense of American taxpayers. Greater transparency in the PBM industry is vital to determine the impact that their tactics are having on patients, the pharmaceutical market, and health care programs administered by the federal government. The House Oversight and Accountability Committee is shining a light on this issue in the healthcare system and will continue to examine solutions to make prescription drugs more affordable for all Americans,” said Chairman Comer.

CVS Health’s CVS Caremark, Cigna’s Express Scripts, and United Health Group’s Optum Rx control an estimated 80 percent of the PBM marketplace. In Committee Republicans’ December 2021 report, initial findings revealed that large PBM consolidation has negatively impacted patient health, increased costs for consumers, forced manufacturers to raise their prices, and created conflicts of interest which distort the market and limit high quality care for patients.

Below are the letters Chairman Comer sent today:

The U.S. Department of Justice told the D.C. Circuit on Thursday that former President Donald Trump is not immune from a trio of lawsuits filed by lawmakers and U.S. Capitol Police officers accusing him of inciting the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol in January 2021.

In an amicus brief, the department told the appellate court that while presidents enjoy absolute immunity related to official acts, the same absolute immunity doesn’t extend to their every action. The department, however, declined to expressly say whether it believed the incitement claims lodged against Trump had any merit.

Eleven members of the U.S. House of Representatives and two Capitol Police officers are seeking to hold the former president liable for emotional distress and other damages caused by the riots on Jan. 6, 2021, following his speech at the Ellipse near the White House. A D.C. federal judge in February 2022 rejected Trump’s immunity argument, and a D.C. Circuit panel seems to be leaning toward affirming that decision.

. . .

The plaintiffs are represented by Joseph M. Sellers, Brian Corman and Alison S. Deich of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC; Janette McCarthy-Wallace, Anthony P. Ashton and Anna Kathryn Barnes of the NAACP; Robert B. McDuff of Mississippi Center for Justice; Patrick A. Malone, Daniel Scialpi and Heather J. Kelly of Patrick Malone & Associates PC; Phillip Andonian and Joseph Caleb of Caleb Andonian PLLC; Matthew Kaiser and Sarah R. Fink of Kaiser Dillon PLLC; and Cameron Kistler, Erica Newland, Kristy L. Parker, Jacek Pruski, Anne Tindall, John Paredes, Genevieve C. Nadeau, Benjamin L. Berwick and Helen E. White of United To Protect Democracy.

Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann LLP and Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC were appointed class counsel in a proposed class action against Silvergate Capital Corp. that accuses the cryptocurrency-focused firm of failing to alert investors it lacked the necessary protections to detect ongoing money laundering on the platform.

U.S. District Judge Cathy Ann Bencivengo on Tuesday issued the order appointing class counsel and designating their clients — International Union of Operating Engineers Local No. 793, Members Pension Benefit Trust of Ontario, UMC Benefit Board Inc., Wespath Institutional Investments LLC, Indiana Public Retirement System, Boston Retirement System and Public School Teachers’ Pension & Retirement Fund of Chicago — as lead plaintiffs.

. . .

Judge Bencivengo said she found the institutional investors made a “sufficient preliminary showing” that they satisfy the typicality and adequacy requirements for lead plaintiff and that Bernstein Litowitz and Cohen Milstein are “reasonable” choices for class counsel.

“Both firms specialize in representing investors in nationwide class actions and have served as lead or co-lead counsel in numerous securities class actions that resulted in significant recoveries for class members,” the order states.

The suit was filed against Silvergate in December, claiming more than $425 million was laundered on Silvergate’s platform before the company went public in 2019.

Silvergate investors said the truth about the money laundering came to light in November when research firm Marcus Aurelius Value tweeted that recently subpoenaed Silvergate bank records showed $425 million in transfers from Silvergate cryptocurrency bank accounts to what the research firm described as South American money launderers. Marcus Aurelius Value conducts due diligence on publicly traded companies.

. . .

The investors are represented by Jonathan D. Uslaner, Hannah Ross, John Rizio-Hamilton, Avi Josefson and Scott R. Foglietta of Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann LLP, and Carol V. Gilden, Steven J. Toll, S. Douglas Bunch, Christina Saler, Jan E. Messerschmidt and Brendan R. Schneiderman of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC.

Read the article on Law360.

An Illinois federal judge gave class status to a group of about 13,500 Black workers who say they were turned away from temporary jobs at a beauty product manufacturer by three staffing agencies because of their race, noting that testimony suggests the manufacturer had a common employment policy.

U.S. District Judge John J. Tharp Jr. rejected arguments from Vee Pak LLC and Staffing Network Holdings LLC that litigating the decade-old claims would require too many individualized inquiries, ruling Tuesday that not every member of the proposed class needs to prove harm before it can be certified.

. . .

Joseph Sellers of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, who is representing the class, told Law360 the 50-page opinion was a “very thoughtful, thorough treatment of the subjects that affect class certification.”

“This has been going on a long time, and our clients have waited a very long time for relief,” Sellers said. “We feel like we’re close to the light at the end of the tunnel here.”

He added that barring any challenge to the class certification, he expects the court will set a trial date later this year.

Vee Pak, Staffing Network and Alternative Staffing are also part of a suit filed by the Illinois attorney general in May. According to the complaint, six staffing agencies engaged in a three-year conspiracy, supported by Vee Pak, to refrain from recruiting or otherwise poaching the temporary workers they assigned to the beauty product manufacturer’s facilities in order to lessen competition.

Sellers said that while they’re two separate cases, he thinks the Illinois attorney general has found, as he has, that some staffing agencies cater to the prejudices of companies they work with.

“Not only is that unlawful, but it’s the kind of practice that should end for the entire industry,” he said. “And we hope that these cases will help bring that to an end.”

. . .

The class is represented by Joseph M. Sellers and Harini Srinivasan of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, by Christopher J. Williams of the National Legal Advocacy Network, and by Christopher J. Wilmes and Caryn C. Lederer of Hughes Socol Piers Resnick & Dym Ltd.

Read the article on Law360.

A new online group, which kicked off as a partnership between Florida Lawyers Assistance and the Florida Bar’s Standing Committee on Mental Health and Wellness of Florida Lawyers, is meant to provide a space where attorneys can discuss managing those diagnoses amid the various stressors of being a lawyer.

The idea for the group came about when Rachael Flanagan connected with the bar’s mental health standing committee chair Karl Klein about how she could get involved with its work.

Read Depression, Bipolar Support Group Launches For Fla. Attys for the full story.

Crypto, Big Tech and the threat of a commercial real estate bubble are some of the areas plaintiffs attorneys are closely watching as targets of potential securities litigation this year.

Securities litigation filings may have settled in at a “baseline” of 200 to 225 cases per year after a two-year deviation in 2018-2019 to roughly twice that caseload due to issues emanating from SPACs, but settlement values have skyrocketed.

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The crypto conundrum: As the caseload of SPAC filings will drop off, “cryptocurrency may replace it,” Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll partner Julie Goldsmith said. However it remains unclear “how it will play out for securities fraud litigation more broadly, since larger institutional clients tend not to hold cryptocurrencies.” The crypto space generally “should lead to enormous settlements, but for the most part the money just doesn’t exist, it simply evaporated,” Reiser said.

The article can be read on The National Law Journal (subscription required).