Los Angeles, CA; Sanofi-Aventis US LLC is facing a consumer fraud class action lawsuit alleging the drug maker encouraged medical providers to bill consumers and third party payers for free samples of the osteoarthritis drug Hyalgan.
The lawsuit was filed by Plumbers' Local No. 690 Health Plan under the New Jersey Consumer Fraud Acton on behalf of anyone in the US who paid any portion of the cost of the drug from 2005 through the present.
According to the complaint, Sanofi attempted to generate or maintain sales by paying physicians between $1,500 and $2,000 to give presentations about the drug. Sanofi sales representative were also given hundreds of thousands of free samples and trained to provide physicians with those samples in exchange for purchases of the drug. Implicit in that training was the notion that doctors would bill for the free samples, the complaint states.
The case is Plumbers' Local No. 690 Health Plan v. Sanofi US Services Inc., case number 2:15-cv-00956 in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey.
