Posts Tagged ‘ Pfizer ’
Week Adjourned: 3.19.10
March 19th, 2010. By LucyC
Top Class Actions
Hey eBay, maybe try Email? eBay’s in trouble this week—facing a class action brought by a deaf woman in Missouri on allegations that the online auction site is discriminatory regarding its telephone registration system.
What?
Apparently, Melissa J. Earll of Nevada, MO, tried multiple times to register to sell items on the site but couldn’t because the company requires sellers to verify their identities via telephone using PINs (short for pain in (@##$)). Despite Ms. Earll’s numerous attempts to explain her hearing issue to the company over email and online chat support asking for an alternate method to authorize her account, eBay reportedly refused to accommodate her.
Now, you can’t blame eBay for requiring security, and rest assured they would likely be sued if they didn’t have any in place. But really, the phone?
It strikes me that there are a couple of interesting assumptions here, the first and obvious one being that everyone should be able to use the phone—to hear instructions—and the second is that you’ll be able to understand those instructions when you hear them—and that has nothing to do with how well you can hear. What about people with cognitive dysfunction?
Ms. Earll’s lawsuit is being filed on behalf of all deaf or hard-of-hearing persons who have been prevented from registering as sellers with eBay as a result of this phone registration policy.
Chantix, Champix, Schmampix…call it what you will but… After years of witnessing Chantix lawsuits get filed in the Read the rest of this entry »
16 Days to File for Bextra, Celebrex Settlement
October 7th, 2009. By AbiK
I can’t get that Tai-Chi woman out of my head from the initial Celebrex ads way back when–remember those ads? Regardless, if you were buying Celebrex (or Bextra) back then, just a reminder…the deadline to file a claim (or opposition) for the Pfizer Bextra and Celebrex Settlement is October 23, 2009…16 days from now.
What’s the Bextra & Celebrex Settlement about?
The lawsuit claimed that Pfizer marketed Bextra and Celebrex as having more benefit than non-selective Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs (NSAIDs) like ibuprofen or naproxen (that you can find on drugstore and grocery store shelves), when such benefits had not been established. Additionally, the lawsuit claimed that Pfizer’s marketing of Bextra and Celebrex was inconsistent with their FDA-approved labels, and that these false marketing tactics made consumers pay more for Bextra and Celebrex than they might have been able to pay for OTC NSAIDs, or no medication at all.
The Bextra/Celebrex Settlement is $89 million, and will be paid out in the following manner: 70% to Third-Party Payors, and 30% to consumers.
Does the Bextra & Celebrex Settlement affect you?
If you paid for a Bextra or Celebrex prescription on or before July 29, 2005, you may be part of the class and eligible to file a claim. Read the rest of this entry »
Another Whistleblower Movie: A True Story, But Is It Real?
September 22nd, 2009. By Hunter West
The whistleblower has come to the big screen yet again, although the movie starring Matt Damon that debuted Friday—The Informant—was hardly the same story as whistleblower John Kopchinski, whose six-year battle with Pfizer recently ended with a “qui tam” lawsuit settlement of $51.5 million for him.
For all his trouble in blowing the whistle on Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Mark Whitacre got 9 years in prison. But that’s not just because he worked with the FBI for three years, wearing wires and employing other surveillance devices in an attempt to expose alleged price-fixing of lysine, a food additive. Where Whitacre went wrong was losing his trust in the FBI, and going off the bipolar deep end by abandoning his quest to bring down the company, instead drifting down the embezzlement sinkhole, defrauding $9 million from his own employer.
In the end, the whistleblower did more time for his own misdeeds, than the price-fixing executives he initially sought to expose.
In contrast, John Kopchinski had a slightly easier time, and a much bigger reward at the end of his struggle. The former soldier was earning $125,000 a year at Pfizer when he was fired in 2003 after he complained to his superiors about the underhanded marketing tactics the pharmaceutical giant was using to vend its drug Bextra. Read the rest of this entry »
In the Pharma World, Begging for Forgiveness is Much More Profitable
September 5th, 2009. By Hunter West
Just when, did the medical community begin serving the pharmaceutical industry—instead of the other way around?
The recent fine levied against Pfizer for various marketing sins involving a handful of prescription drugs may well be the largest ($2.3 billion), and most comprehensive (Pfizer was required to sign an agreement of conduct that has been described as being the most stringent in history)—but it is by no means the first such case. Pharmaceutical companies have for years been bending the rules and circumventing regulations by promoting drugs off label (that’s illegal), and other unsavory activities, all in the quest for the mighty greenback.
Doctors have been lavished with gifts in exchange for prescribing someone’s drug. They accept ‘consulting fees’ from pharmaceuticals in exchange for lecturing, in their own words mind you, on the benefits of a particular drug. It’s all perfectly legal, but it shouldn’t be.
And that’s one of the many wrongs percolating in a health care system that’s severely broken and in need of overhaul. Read the rest of this entry »
NAMI – Drug Money Laundering is Illegal
April 18th, 2009. By Evelyn Pringle
The National Alliance for Mental Illness is the latest member of the psycho-pharmaceutical cartel whose Big Pharma money trail is under investigation by the US Senate Finance Committee, with Iowa’s Republican Senator Chuck Grassley leading the charge. Read the rest of this entry »
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