Novartis and the US Department of Justice are squabbling over documents that allegedly contain details of nearly 80,000 “sham” events that the drug maker used to encourage doctors to prescribe several blood pressure medicines, according to documents filed late last week in federal court in New York.
The tussle comes as part of a run-up to a planned trial this summer in which the feds plan to argue that Novartis violated federal kickback laws for nearly a decade. Last November, the feds sought the documents, but the drug maker has maintained the government is unfairly expanding the scope of its inquiry and that the request is “extraordinarily burdensome,” according to court documents.
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