Life Sciences

  • April 17, 2024

    Trial-Ready Paraquat MDL Cases Tossed After Testimony Axed

    An Illinois federal judge on Wednesday threw out the first group of trial-ready cases over the herbicide paraquat, agreeing with Syngenta and Chevron that the plaintiffs' expert testimony must be excluded and finding that the cases fail without that testimony.

  • April 17, 2024

    Walgreens Investors' $36M Deal In Opioid Suit Gets First OK

    An Illinois federal judge on Wednesday granted his initial approval of a $36 million settlement to end a stockholder's derivative suit accusing Walgreens and its leadership of failing to limit retail pharmacies from dispensing unreasonable amounts of opioids.

  • April 17, 2024

    PTC Therapeutics Settles Shareholder Suit Over Director Pay

    PTC Therapeutics Inc. has agreed to corporate governance reforms to settle a derivative shareholder lawsuit challenging its allegedly "lavish" non-employee director compensation awards, according to a stipulation of settlement filed Wednesday in Delaware's Court of Chancery.

  • April 17, 2024

    United Therapeutics Can't Bar Rival Lung Disease Drug

    Repeating himself for the second time in the last several weeks, a federal judge in Delaware on Wednesday said he won't stop a biochemical startup from launching a drug that would compete directly with one of United Therapeutics' biggest pharmaceutical products.

  • April 17, 2024

    Kraft Sued Over Lead Contamination In Lunchables

    Kraft has been slapped with a proposed class action over its popular Lunchables snack kits after independent testing of the kits allegedly found that they contained high, though legally allowable, levels of lead and other harmful substances.

  • April 17, 2024

    J&J Tells Jurors To Look To Evidence And Science In Talc Trial

    Johnson & Johnson's attorney urged a Florida jury Wednesday to look beyond the emotion in the case of a longtime baby powder user who died from cancer and to the science and the evidence, which he said fail to show a causal link between talcum powder and ovarian cancer.

  • April 17, 2024

    Karuna Investor Ends Suit After Bristol-Myers Seals $14B Deal

    A Karuna Therapeutics shareholder has dropped her proposed class action after Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. completed its $14 billion purchase of the biotechology company, a deal the suit alleged was brought about by misrepresentations to investors to gain their support.

  • April 17, 2024

    Jury To Decide Fault Of Driver In Spray-Huffing DUI Death

    A Minnesota federal judge on Wednesday said it's up to a jury to decide whether a driver acted intentionally or negligently when he allegedly huffed a compressed gas spray and killed a woman in a collision, in a trial against the spray's manufacturer over the death.

  • April 17, 2024

    3 Takeaways From Revived Obviousness Case On J&J Patent

    A Federal Circuit ruling from earlier this month that told a judge to reconsider upholding a Johnson & Johnson schizophrenia drug patent emphasizes that analyzing whether a patent is invalid as obvious requires focusing on what it actually claims and an inventor's creativity, attorneys said.

  • April 17, 2024

    FDA's Foot-Dragging On Menthol Ban Sparks Frustration

    The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's yearslong delay to ban menthol has left public health groups frustrated over why the agency has failed to act on what the groups see as an obvious way to improve public health and prevent needless deaths, prompting a second lawsuit over taking menthol off store shelves.

  • April 17, 2024

    FDA Denies Marketing For 65 MNGO Disposable E-Cigarettes

    The latest action by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on e-cigarettes was to tell a Chinese company to take its range of 65 e-cigarette products in a variety of flavors from menthol to pink lemonade and watermelon off the market.

  • April 17, 2024

    FDA Tells Justices It Has A Better Vape Case In Mind

    The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has told the U.S. Supreme Court that if it wants to address the agency's decision not to approve applications for flavored e-cigarettes, there is a better case in the pipeline than the appeal lodged by Lotus Vaping Technologies that the justices should choose instead.

  • April 17, 2024

    SEC Has Careful Eye On Disclosures Amid Israel-Hamas War

    Against the backdrop of protracted war, the U.S. securities watchdog is urging U.S.-listed Israeli companies to disclose more details describing how the Israel-Hamas conflict is affecting their operations in order to keep investors apprised of risks, lawyers say.

  • April 17, 2024

    'Ringleader' Of Black Market HIV Drug Scam Gets 9 Years

    A New York federal judge on Wednesday sentenced a pharmacy operator to nine years in prison for spearheading a $13 million scheme to sell black market HIV medication and collect fraudulent reimbursements from Medicaid and Medicare.

  • April 17, 2024

    Manatt Adds NY Bankruptcy, Financial Regulatory Partners

    Manatt Phelps & Phillips LLP announced that it hired a pair of experienced New York-based attorneys who focus their practices on regulatory matters as partners in its bankruptcy and financial regulatory practices.

  • April 17, 2024

    WashU Medical School Settles Claims Of Asylee Bias, Firing

    The Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has settled claims that it fired a worker who complained that he was being forced to prove he held asylum, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

  • April 17, 2024

    Ex-Pharma Exec's Contempt Plea Rejected By Judge

    A Massachusetts federal judge on Wednesday rejected a former pharmaceutical executive's agreement to plead guilty to contempt for using an alias to get around a consent judgment in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission fraud case, saying both the former executive and the government knew he'd view the sentence as too low.

  • April 17, 2024

    Elliott Waives BioMarin Board Deal, Moots Del. Suit

    Elliott Investment Management LP has waived an agreement with BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc. that gave the activist investor three new seats on the biopharmaceutical company's board, mooting a Delaware Chancery Court lawsuit that a BioMarin shareholder filed earlier this month.

  • April 16, 2024

    House Panel Takes Aim At Change Healthcare, FTC Over Hack

    A House subcommittee exploring ways to boost cybersecurity in the healthcare industry on Tuesday blasted Change Healthcare for failing to take appropriate steps to block a damaging cyberattack that echoed another recent strike on critical infrastructure and the Federal Trade Commission for not stopping the provider from controlling such a large market share. 

  • April 16, 2024

    Eli Lilly's Insulin Price Cap Deal Collapses After Cert. Denial

    Eli Lilly & Co. and insulin buyers have called off a proposed nationwide settlement that would've capped insulin prices and been worth up to $500 million over several years, a decision that was made after the buyers lost a class certification bid early this year, according to the buyers' counsel.

  • April 16, 2024

    NC Treasurer Backs FTC On Hospital Merger Challenge

    North Carolina's treasurer agreed Monday that Novant Health's $320 million plan to pick up a pair of hospitals is a bad idea, throwing its weight behind the Federal Trade Commission's challenge to the deal in federal court.

  • April 16, 2024

    IBM Gained Most AI Patents By Far In 2023

    IBM obtained more U.S. artificial intelligence patents in 2023 than any other company, with its closest competitors falling behind by more than 300 patents, according to a Harrity Patent Analytics report announced Tuesday.

  • April 16, 2024

    Life Sciences Group Of The Year: Fenwick

    Defending Novo Nordisk's patents for diabetes drug Ozempic and guiding Dice Therapeutics through its $2.4 billion acquisition by Eli Lilly & Co. are among the achievements that put Fenwick & West LLP among Law360's 2023 Life Sciences Groups of the Year.

  • April 15, 2024

    Taro Inks $36M Investor Deal Over Generics Price-Fixing

    Taro Pharmaceutical Industries shareholders asked a New York federal judge Monday to greenlight a $36 million settlement resolving proposed class claims that the company misled investors about alleged generic drug price-fixing that led to a drop in stock price upon news of a U.S. Department of Justice antitrust investigation.

  • April 15, 2024

    Chancery Denies Forte Biosciences' Bid To Toss Investor Suit

    Board members of a struggling clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company who allegedly took defensive measures to stay in power after activist investors pushed the company to liquidate must face a stockholder's Delaware Chancery Court derivative suit that they breached their fiduciary duties to shareholders, a vice chancellor said Monday.

Expert Analysis

  • How Attorneys Can Be More Efficient This Holiday Season

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    Attorneys should consider a few key tips to speed up their work during the holidays so they can join the festivities — from streamlining the document review process to creating similar folder structures, says Bennett Rawicki at Hilgers Graben.

  • 3 Defense Takeaways From The Bankman-Fried Trial

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    FTX founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried’s recent fraud conviction offers several key lessons for future white collar defendants, from the changing nature of cross-examination to the continued risks of taking the stand, say Jonathan Porter and Gregg Sofer at Husch Blackwell.

  • Series

    Children's Book Writing Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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    Becoming a children's book author has opened doors to incredible new experiences of which I barely dared to dream, but the process has also changed my life by serving as a reminder that strong writing, networking and public speaking skills are hugely beneficial to a legal career, says Shaunna Bailey at Sheppard Mullin.

  • How The PTAB Landscape Shifted In 2023

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    Attorneys at Finnegan consider the impact of noteworthy Patent Trial and Appeal Board developments in 2023, including rulemaking, litigation, precedential decisions and director reviews that affected PTAB practice, and offer a reference for examining future proceedings and strategies.

  • New Pharma Guidelines Bring Pitfalls For Compounders

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    New guidelines from U.S. Pharmacopeia, which went into effect last month, require some extensive and potentially expensive compliance efforts from hospitals and compounding pharmacies, and smaller compounders could particularly struggle, says Natalia Mazina at Mazina Law.

  • Opinion

    What Happens If High Court Rejects Releases In Purdue Ch. 11

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    Reading the tea leaves following the U.S. Supreme Court's recent arguments in Harrington v. Purdue Pharma, it appears likely that the justices will decide that bankruptcy courts lack the power to release third-party claims against nondebtors, which would result in one of three scenarios, says Gregory Germain at Syracuse University.

  • FDA's Recent Litigation Records Are Strong, But Imperfect

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    The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has notched its share of litigation wins in recent years thanks to a number of key advantages, but the FDA has been less successful in certain highly visible arenas, Jonathan Berman and Colleen Heisey at Jones Day.

  • Coming To Terms With Means-Plus-Function Patent Claims

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    Made-up patent claim terms can open arguments that means-plus-function claim interpretation applies under the Patent Act, but a series of practice tips, including the use of structural language immediately after introducing a claim element, can help avoid such perceptions, says Brad Luchsinger at Harness IP.

  • 5 Steps For Healthcare Companies After Biden's AI Order

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    Rather than simply monitoring for the issuance of agency guidelines on artificial intelligence in the wake of President Joe Biden's October executive order, health and life sciences companies should take action now and begin building internal operational and technical infrastructures designed to govern the use of AI, says Joy Sharp at Faegre Drinker.

  • Opinion

    Giving The Gov't Drug Patent March-In Authority Is Bad Policy

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    The Biden administration's recent proposal to allow government seizure of certain taxpayer-funded drug patents is a terrible idea that would negate the benefits of government-funded research, to the detriment of patients and the wider economy, says Wayne Winegarden at Pacific Research Institute.

  • How Clients May Use AI To Monitor Attorneys

    Excerpt from Practical Guidance
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    Artificial intelligence tools will increasingly enable clients to monitor and evaluate their counsel’s activities, so attorneys must clearly define the terms of engagement and likewise take advantage of the efficiencies offered by AI, says Ronald Levine at Herrick Feinstein.

  • 7 Enforcement Predictions For US Export Controls, Sanctions

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    Federal agencies' assertions of coming increases in export-control and sanctions-violations enforcement are not new, but recent improvements in resources and inter-agency cooperation allow for certain predictions about how the administration’s latest approach to enforcement may be applied going forward, say attorneys at Akin.

  • How AI Executive Order Aims To Compete For Foreign Talent

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    Immigration provisions within the Biden administration's executive order on artificial intelligence take a strategic approach to promoting the U.S. as a destination for AI and STEM talent by streamlining visa processing, enhancing educational and exchange programs, and improving current visa programs and pathways to permanent residency, says Eric Bord at Morgan Lewis.

  • Series

    ESG Around The World: Singapore

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    Singapore is keen to establish itself as a leading international financial center and a key player in the sustainable finance ecosystem, and key initiatives led by its government and other regulatory bodies have helped the Asian nation progress from its initially guarded attitude toward ESG investment and reporting, say attorneys at Morgan Lewis.

  • Series

    The Pop Culture Docket: Judge D'Emic On Moby Grape

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    The 1968 Moby Grape song "Murder in My Heart for the Judge" tells the tale of a fictional defendant treated with scorn by the judge, illustrating how much the legal system has evolved in the past 50 years, largely due to problem-solving courts and the principles of procedural justice, says Kings County Supreme Court Administrative Judge Matthew D'Emic.

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