A settlement has been reached in a whistleblower class action lawsuit brought against CR Bard Inc who is accused of knowingly caused false claims to be submitted to the Medicare program for brachytherapy seeds used to treat prostate cancer.
The whistleblower will receive $10,134,600 as her share of the civil settlement. In addition, according to a non-prosecution agreement with the United States, Bard has agreed to pay an additional $2.2 million and to take numerous remedial steps, many of which the company identified and began to implement prior to the criminal investigation, to enhance its corporate compliance program to prevent similar illegal actions in the future.
The whistleblower case was filed January 2006. The government's claims were that, from 1998 to 2006, Bard provided illegal remuneration to customers and physicians to induce them to purchase Bard’s seeds, in violation of the Anti-Kickback Statute. The illegal remuneration allegedly took the form of certain grants, guaranteed minimum rebates, conference fees, marketing assistance and/or free medical equipment that Bard paid to customers and/or physicians who used the seeds to perform treatment for prostate cancer. Hospitals ultimately submitted bills to Medicare for these seeds, which the government alleged were rendered false by Bard’s illegal kickback activity. The government alleged that Bard was liable under the False Claims Act for causing the submission of those false claims.
