BATON ROUGE –– A group of pharmaceutical companies lost an appeal.
The First Circuit Court of Appeal issued a 16-page ruling on Oct. 3 reversing the East Baton Rouge Parish 19th Judicial District Court decision in the lawsuit filed by the state of Louisiana against Takeda Pharmaceuticals America Inc. and six other defendants.
The state sued the companies over the diabetic drug Actos, which allegedly could cause bladder cancer. The state alleged the pharmaceutical companies promoted a campaign to mislead the state for years.
The lower court, per the ruling, issued a judgment "partially sustaining a peremptory exception raising the objection of no cause of action, partially sustaining a peremptory exception raising the objection of no right of action, and dismissing all of the State' s claims against the defendants."
In the ruling, Judge Jewel Welch said, "The trial court had improperly sustained a partial exception of no cause of action ... the state's claims against the defendants were based on the factual allegations that the defendants knew or should have known of the increased risk of bladder cancer associated with Actos, and that they fraudulently misrepresented and misled the state for years regarding the drug, which caused the state to reimburse and pay for a larger quantity of the drug than it would have had it not been misled."
Following Welch's opinion, judges Page McClendon and William Crain issued dissents.
In her opinion, McClendon wrote, "This court should consider the merits of those partial exceptions together on appeal rather than using technical rules of procedure to reverse the trial court's judgment."
Crain wrote "the allegations of the petition fail to establish both a cause of action and a right of action for any one claim asserted by the plaintiff."
Louisiana First Circuit Court of Appeal Case number 2017 CA 0498