May 2012

By Reuben Guttman and Traci Buschner. Mr. Guttman is a Senior Fellow and Adjunct Professor at the Emory Law School Center for Advocacy and Dispute Resolution, and a partner at the firm of Grant & Eisenhofer where he heads the firm's whistleblower practice. He is a founder of the website, Whistleblowerlaws. Ms. Buschner is a Senior Counsel with Grant & Eisenhofer. Mr. Guttman and Ms. Buschner were lead counsel for the lead whistleblower, Meredith McCoyd, in U.S. ex rel. McCoyd v. Abbott Labs.

Abbott Labs has agreed to pay $1.6 billion dollars to settle criminal and civil allegations that it engaged in the unlawful marketing of its anti-epileptic drug Depakote.

The settlement arose out of a False Claims Act (FCA) case filed in the fall of 2007.  Whistleblower or "Relator" Meredith McCoyd, alleged that the company marketed Depakote to elderly nursing home patients and to children for purposes that had not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).  Ms. McCoyd also alleged that Abbott made misrepresentations about the safety and efficacy of the drug and paid kickbacks to doctors and others.

This case was not just about lost government dollars. It was about a company that placed money over medicine by marketing unlawfully to vulnerable patient populations. And we still don't know what the long-term consequences are for those patients who took Depakote as a result of marketing improprieties.

Unfortunately, Abbott is not the first pharmaceutical company to face allegations of unlawful marketing tactics. Astra Zeneca, Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer have all paid hefty fines following allegations of marketing derelictions.

by Jeremy Leaming

The severely conservative U.S. House of Representatives is peddling yet another effort to slash services for the poor.

As TPM’s Sahil Kapur reports “House Republicans are set to advance legislation to replace automatic defense spending cuts they agreed to last year with cuts to programs for the poor and working class.”

Yes, the House’s plan is likely only to be symbolic, as Kapur notes the legislation is expected to go nowhere in the Senate. Yet it provides, as if anyone needed it, another example of the conservative party’s extreme opposition to any policy that might raise taxes on the super wealthy.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen, (pictured) the House Budget Committee’s Ranking Member, in a May 3 report blasted the proposal for advancing “costly additional tax breaks for millionaires while finding savings by ending the Medicare guarantee for seniors, slashing investments that strengthen our economy, and shredding the social safety net.”

As noted here, a string of commentators have argued that the conservative party has been retooled to focus solely on protecting tax cuts for the wealthy, even as the middle class shrinks and poverty grows.

A recent study from political scientists at the University of Georgia and New York University reflects a drastically changed political party, noting that the “Republican Party is the most conservative it has been in a century,” NPR’s Frank James reports.

In a piece for The Huffington Post, Mike Lux said the political scientists “are underestimating.”