“Under Louisiana’s Medical Assistance Program Integrity Law (MAPIL), anyone who attempted to defraud or cause false and misleading information to disseminate, you are subject to civil monetary fine,” says Morrow. According to the evidence, Janssen made some 27,000 phone sales calls to doctors and sent hundreds of “dear doctor letters” downplaying the diabetes link to Risperdal.
The award came late Thursday evening in a case involving the drug Risperdal, a popular antipsychotic administered for the treatment of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder manufactured by Janssen, a division of Ortho-McNeil-Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc., which is part of Johnson & Johnson. The jury, which has been hearing the case for almost two months, found the firm misled Louisiana doctors about the possible side effects of the drug.
Johnson & Johnson lost a $257.7 million jury verdict in Louisiana for making misleading claims about the safety of the company’s Risperdal antipsychotic drug.
J&J officials defrauded the state’s Medicaid system by wrongfully touting Risperdal as superior to competing antipsychotic drugs and minimizing its links to diabetes, said jurors in state court in Opelousas, Louisiana.