NEW YORK — A federal judge ordered CVS Health’s Omnicare unit to pay $948.8 million in penalties and damages, in a whistleblower lawsuit claiming it fraudulently billed the U.S. government for invalid drug prescriptions.
In a Monday evening order, U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon in Manhattan imposed a $542-million penalty for filing 3,342,032 false claims between 2010 and 2018.
McMahon also awarded $406.8 million of damages, representing three times the $135.6 million that a jury awarded on April 29.
The tripling was required under the federal False Claims Act, which lets whistleblowers sue on behalf of the federal government and share in recoveries.
CVS plans to appeal the judgment. The Woonsocket, Rhode Island-based drugstore chain and pharmacy benefits manager bought Omnicare in 2015. Omnicare has asked McMahon to throw out the case or grant a new trial.
“This lawsuit centered on a highly technical prescription dispensing recordkeeping issue that was allowed by law in many states,” CVS said in a statement on Tuesday. “There was no claim in this case that any patient paid for a medication they shouldn’t have or that any patient was harmed.”
The lawsuit was filed in 2015 by Uri Bassan, a former Omnicare pharmacist in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and joined by the federal government in 2019.
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