Alabama’s Supreme Court Continues to Screw Citizens

Guest Column
by Roger Schuler

The Alabama Supreme Court apparently was not content to cheat the public with the outrageous ExxonMobil ruling. It pulled pretty much the same fraudulent stunt again the other day, with a few slight variations.

In late 2007, the Alabama Supremes stunned many observers by overturning most of a $3.6 billion jury verdict in a fraud case against oil giant ExxonMobil. That decision robbed state coffers of badly needed funds at the outset of the Bush recession.

The high court was at it again recently, overturning a $274 million verdict in a fraud case against three pharmaceutical companies. The Supreme Court found that AstraZeneca, Novartis, and GlaxoSmithKline did not defraud the state in pricing Medicaid prescription drugs.

This issue goes well beyond Alabama. Similar lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies are pending in other states, including Mississippi, South Carolina, Utah, Hawaii and Alaska.

How did the Alabama Supreme Court come to its conclusion? The key issue was “reliance,” one of four elements in a fraud case. Essentially, the high court found that the pharmaceutical companies tried to cheat the Alabama Medicaid Agency (AMA), but AMA did not “rely” on the misrepresentations, so a fraud did not occur.

That is like saying: “I tried to steal $500 out of your wallet, and I had my hand on the cash and was pulling it out, but you caught me — so I didn’t do anything wrong.”

If you think there is something wrong with that reasoning, join the crowd.

Read the rest of this entry »