Louisiana AG announces recovery of $45 million from GSK

BATON ROUGE, La. (Legal Newsline) - Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell announced Friday that the state of Louisiana would receive $45 million from GlaxoSmithKline, a British healthcare company, to resolve allegations of Medicaid fraud and deceptive marketing.

GlaxoSmithKline allegedly deceptively promoted its popular diabetes drug, Avandia, and other prescription medications including Valtrex, Flovent, Lotronex, Imitrex, Zofran, Lamictal, Advair, Wellbutrin and Paxil. District Court Judge Janice Clark announced the agreement, which is the largest pharmaceutical recovery ever received by the state of Louisiana.

"Today's multi-million dollar recovery is historic for Louisiana and marks an important victory for our consumers who have every right to know about the risks and negative side-effects of prescription drugs," Caldwell said. "These kinds of deceptive tactics and misrepresentations will not be tolerated in this state, and violators like GSK will be held accountable."

Caldwell said the state benefitted from not taking part in a multi-state settlement with GSK that was reached in November.

"By pursuing GSK on our own, we have recovered 20 times more money for the state of Louisiana than we would have in the multi-state settlement approved last November," Caldwell said.

Last year, GSK agreed to plead guilty and pay $3 billion, mostly to the federal government, to resolve civil and criminal liability related to the company's alleged unlawful promotion of certain prescription drugs, unlawful price reporting practices and failure to report certain safety data.