Last week, in United States v. Scully, the Second Circuit vacated the conviction of a distributor of pharmaceutical products on misbranding charges due to evidentiary issues surrounding his advice-of-counsel defense at trial.
The Rise and Fall of Pharmalogical
William Scully and Rodi Lameh founded Pharmalogical, Inc,, planning to acquire pharmaceutical products from manufacturers and sell them to doctors, hospitals
Continue Reading Second Circuit Vacates Conviction of Pharmaceutical Distributor on Advice-of-Counsel Defense
The Second Circuit recently agreed to accept an interlocutory appeal to decide the question whether a violation of the False Claims Act’s “first-to-file” rule compels dismissal of the complaint or whether it can be cured by the filing of an amended pleading.
Last week, the Second Circuit held that a False Claims Act relator does not have to plead details of specific alleged false billings or invoices to the government, as long as he can allege facts leading to a strong inference that specific claims were submitted and that information about them are peculiarly within the defendant’s knowledge.
Health care fraud prosecutions in the Second Circuit and throughout the country have typically sought forfeiture money judgments against all defendants for the proceeds of the fraud obtained by all members of a health care fraud conspiracy. The Supreme Court recently curtailed these efforts in 
The Supreme Court held last week that in a federal health care fraud prosecution, the Sixth Amendment prevents the government from obtaining a pretrial freeze of assets that were untainted by the alleged crime and that defendant sought to use to pay her lawyer.
Earlier this month, EDNY Judge Joanna Seybert examined the elements of Aggravated Identify Theft in an interesting context: a motion to unseal grand jury minutes in a health care fraud prosecution, 
An interesting SDNY 
Columbia University agreed to pay $9 million this week in settlement of a SDNY False Claims Act case alleging that it had submitted false claims in connection with federal grants funding AIDS and HIV related work. Columbia was the grant administrator on behalf of ICAP, an entity that received millions of dollars in federal grants for support and services for