A federal appeals court has upheld a lower court’s decision to dismiss a whistleblower litigation against Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ), noting that the plaintiffs, in violation of court orders, have misused the confidential information they obtained from a related lawsuit.
A three-judge panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that the U.S. Magistrate Judge in Boston, Page Kelley, was justified in dismissing the lawsuit against J&J (JNJ) unit DePuy Orthopaedics in 2021.
Two British orthopedic surgeons, Antoni Nargol and David Langton, had sued DePuy under the federal False Claims Act in 2012, accusing the company of marketing faulty hip implant devices.
At the time, the duo served as expert witnesses in a separate mass tort litigation related to DePuy’s metal-on-metal Pinnacle hip implant devices that the company pulled from the market in 2013 after the FDA tightened its artificial hip regulations.
The appeals court judges sided with the lower court ruling in light of the evidence that Nargol and Langton wrongfully used confidential information obtained from the mass tort litigation. A protective court order has shielded that information to prevent potential disclosure of JNJ’s (JNJ) trade secrets.
Ross Brooks, a lawyer representing the plaintiff, said his clients were disappointed over the ruling. “The record plainly shows that Drs. Nargol and Langton offered to prove their good faith compliance with the relevant court orders,” Reuters ...
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