Michigan ex rel Gurganus v. CVS Caremark Corp.

Before the Supreme Court, three actions: two class actions and a qui tam action brought in the name of the state of Michigan involving allegations that multiple pharmacies systematically violated MCL 333.17755(2) by improperly retaining savings that should have been passed on to customers when dispensing generic drugs in the place of their brand-name equivalents. Furthermore, plaintiffs argued that violations of section 17755(2) necessarily resulted in violations of the Health Care False Claim Act (HCFCA) and the Medicaid False Claim Act (MFCA) when pharmacists submitted reimbursement claims to the state for Medicaid payments that they were not entitled to receive. "The inferences and assumptions required to implicate defendants [were] simply too tenuous for plaintiffs' claims to survive summary judgment. Moreover, plaintiffs' overbroad approach of identifying all transactions in which a generic drug was dispensed fail[ed] to hone in on the only relevant transactions - those in which a generic drug was dispensed in place of a brand-name drug." The Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeals’ construction of MCL 333.17755(2) and its holding that plaintiffs' pleadings were sufficient to survive summary judgment, vacated the remainder of the Court of Appeals' judgment, and reinstated the trial court's grant of summary judgment to defendants. View "Michigan ex rel Gurganus v. CVS Caremark Corp." on Justia Law