A Medical Device Daily
Olshan Grundman Frome Rosenzweig & Wolosky reported its client Guidance Endodontics (Albuquerque, New Mexico) won a $44 million jury award in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico in Albuquerque. The company sued Dentsply (York, Pennsylvania) and Dentsply's endodontics subsidiary, Tulsa Dental Products (Tulsa, Oklahoma).
Guidance sued Dentsply and Tulsa Dental on Nov. 21, 2008 seeking damages and injunctive relief arising from multiple breaches of an exclusive manufacturing and supply agreement, anti-competitive and unfair business practices under the New Mexico Unfair Practices Act and violation of the Lanham Act.
The court granted Guidance both a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction in eight days of hearings in December 2008 and January 2009. Dentsply and Tulsa Dental filed multiple claims of their own against Guidance and its founder, Charles Goodis, MD.
In other legal news:
• The Department of Health and Human Services reported that Solomon Nathaniel of Sterling Heights, Michigan, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Detroit to participating in a conspiracy to defraud the Medicare program.
In his guilty plea, Nathaniel, 51, a licensed physical therapist, admitted that he worked as a contract therapist for Suresh Chand, a co-conspirator who pleaded guilty to similar charges on Sept. 29. Chand owned and controlled several companies operating in the Detroit area that purported to provide physical and occupational therapy services to Medicare beneficiaries.
Nathaniel admitted that he, Chand and others created fictitious therapy files appearing to document physical and occupational therapy services provided to Medicare beneficiaries, when in fact no such services had been provided.
According to court documents, the fictitious services reflected in the files were billed to Medicare through sham Medicare providers controlled by Chand and other co-conspirators.
Nathaniel said that he signed nearly 1,250 fictitious physical therapy files indicating that he had provided physical therapy services to Medicare beneficiaries, when in fact he had not. Nathanial also admitted that between December 2003 and July 2006, he falsified physical therapy files that supported claims to the Medicare program totaling $6,250,000. Medicare actually paid $2,875,000 on those claims.
• A class action lawsuit was reported to have been filed in Los Angeles Superior Court against Cedars Sinai Medical Center (Los Angeles) GE Healthcare (Waukesha, Wisconsin) and GE Healthcare Technologies (Barrington, Illinois) on behalf of patients who received 8-times the approved dosage of radiation during their CT brain perfusion scans to diagnose strokes.
The lawsuit has plaintiffs that are suing for medical malpractice, strict product liability, negligence, breach of express warranty, and breach of implied warranty.
This class action lawsuit includes all individuals who received a CT brain perfusion scan at Cedars Sinai Medical Center from February 2008 through August 2009. It also includes anyone who received such a scan that utilized CT image machines manufactured by GE Healthcare, and GE Healthcare Technologies at any medical facility during the two year period preceding this suit.