We are on a DRI panel this September in Nashville discussing challenges to expert testimony, so we are especially vigilant when it comes to new cases on this subject. The rulings on expert admissibility in United States v. Biogen Idec., Inc., 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 120549 (D. Mass. July 8, 2022), are not especially surprising. There is too much genuflecting in the direction of interpreting Rule 702 “liberally” to favor admissibility, and too much muttering about the “considerable latitude” courts have in deciding whether expert testimony would help thinking, and too much citation of older cases predating post-Daubert amendments to Rule 702, but most of the rulings in Biogen are sensible.
In Biogen, a plaintiff-relator sued the defendant for allegedly causing health care providers to file fraudulent Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement claims in violation of the False Claims Act, 31 U.S.C. Sections 3728, et seq., and various state laws, by paying kickbacks to influence them to prescribe the defendant’s multiple sclerosis products in violation of the Anti-Kickback Statute, 42 U.S.C. Section 1320a-7 [AKS].
The plaintiff proffered testimony by several experts challenging the educational value of programs offered by the defendant to health care providers. The defendant filed what the court called Daubert motions, though we now prefer calling them Rule 702 motions, in the hope of leaving some dumb Daubert precedents behind. The defendant won some arguments and lost some.
We’ll get...
ST. GEORGE, Utah (ABC4) — A Utah podiatrist and two nurses have been federally indicted on fraud charges after they allegedly submitted fraudulent claims to Medicare for skin substitute services, ...