Within months of making a formal appearance as lead trial counsel in a healthcare fraud qui tam action, Reese Marketos attorneys negotiated a $100 million settlement with courtroom opponent PharMerica. But RM client and relator Marc Silver fought the defendant for 13 years before reaching this result.
Silver blew the whistle on PharMerica in 2011, alleging the in-house pharmacy services provider for nursing homes engaged in a kickback scheme in which it offered steeply discounted prices for some patients in exchange for access to more-lucrative patient populations. Silver alleged that PharMerica’s government reimbursements ballooned from $308 million to $1.2 billion between 2006 and 2012 and that PharMerica’s kickbacks defrauded the federal government’s Medicare and Medicaid programs.
Philadelphia co-counsel Berger Montague litigated the case for more than a decade before hiring RM in 2023 in anticipation of a jury trial. The $100 million settlement is one of the largest recoveries in a False Claims Act case that had been declined by the federal government.
“Like all of our cases, we wanted the opportunity to present Mr. Silver’s long-fought case to a jury, but the settlement marks an extraordinary recovery for the taxpayers in a declined False Claims Act case,” said partner Josh Russ, one of the lead attorneys of the RM trial team.
The trial team also included partners Adam Sanderson, Brett Rosenthal, Andrew Wirmani and Pete Marketos.
Per the settlement, PharMerica agreed to pay the federal government $95 million and $5 million to a handful of individual states affected by the alleged kickback scheme.
The case, styled United States of America ex rel. Silver v. Omnicare, Inc., PharMerica Corp, et al., was litigated in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey. The RM team finalized the settlement agreement in May 2024 right as some of the same lawyers were in the midst of another qui tam trial in the District of New Jersey that resulted in a $150 million verdict for another set of RM whistleblower clients.
Press Coverage (subscription required for some publications)
Philadelphia Inquirer: https://www.inquirer.com/health/whistleblower-false-claims-act-settlment-100-million-pharmerica-20240718.html
Bloomberg Law: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/federal-contracting/pharmerica-whistleblower-settle-13-year-drug-kickback-lawsuit
The Texas Lawbook: https://texaslawbook.net/litigation-roundup-fifth-circuit-revives-pioneer-mieco-gas-delivery-fight/
Law360: https://www.law360.com/articles/1859523
New Jersey Law Journal: https://www.law.com/njlawjournal/2024/07/18/100m-settlement-pharmerica-corp-agrees-to-9-figure-deal/?slreturn=20241116-40718