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Case Abstract
In 2008, Lowey Dannenberg’s health care litigation team, with co-counsel, launched the first-ever prosecution of global liens on behalf of multiple health benefit plan providers in a single action against participating insureds in a mass tort settlement, after Merck had agreed to create a fund of $4.85 billion to settle, en masse, personal injury claims associated with the drug Vioxx. Lowey Dannenberg, representing more than 40 of the nation’s largest health benefit plan providers, filed an injunctive action in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. We prosecuted our clients’ lien claims through the District Court and Court of Appeals for more than one year, leading to a settlement in 2009 establishing a new model private lien resolution program unlike any ever utilized before in a mass tort settlement. This settlement program was heralded by the District Court as a novel approach to the seemingly intractable, yet recurring, problem of how to deal with the interplay of ERISA reimbursement rights with patients’ privacy rights. The lien resolution program is expected to result in the payment to our clients of tens of millions of dollars in 2010 in satisfaction of reimbursement liens.
Richard Cohen, Peter St. Phillip, Gerald Lawrence and Todd Garber were the Lowey Dannenberg lawyers responsible.
Clients
More than 40 health benefit plan providers.
Case Name
Avmed v. BrownGreer PLC, Case No. 08-30802 (E.D. La. )
(United States District Judge Eldon Fallon)
Current Status
Settled.
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