JACKSON, Miss. (Legal Newsline) ‒ The state of Mississippi’s lawsuit against three pharmacies will stay at the circuit court level, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled Aug. 9.
The 2016 suit states that Walgreens Co., CVS and Fred’s Inc. used “deceptive trade practices and fraudulent reporting of inflated ‘usual and customary’ prices in the defendant’s reimbursement requests to the Mississippi Department of Medicaid,” according to the Supreme Court's ruling.
The state alleges that the pharmacies misrepresented those prices to obtain higher prescription drug reimbursements from the state.
After the initial amended filing in September 2016, the DeSoto County Chancery Court determined that the case was a matter best heard in circuit court and transferred it to the DeSoto County Circuit Court. The Chancery Court's decision was in response to the defendants' request that the case was more a matter to be tried at the circuit court level, as the state was requesting legal relief through legal claims and arguments.
The defendants also argued that if the matter was not transferred to the Circuit Court, then they would be deprived of their constitutional right to a jury trial.
The Chancery Court deferred to the Mississippi Constitution’s inviolate right to a trial by jury, finding that "when claims are connected to a contractual relationship or are otherwise tied to a question of law, such questions of both law and equity are more appropriately presented in circuit court," the Supreme Court stated.
The decision was appealed by the state, which argued that the Chancery Court’s transfer of the matter to the Circuit Court “served to deprive the attorney general of his constitutional authority to seek an injunction under the Mississippi Consumer Protection Act (MCPA),” the high court stated.
The court determined that while the state seeks both legal and equitable remedies through the attorney general, both remedies exist in a single action; therefore, jurisdiction properly rests in either Chancery or Circuit Court. The court also determined that the power of the attorney general to pursue an injunction under the MCPA was not stripped as he may pursue such a claim at the circuit court level.