A settlement has been reached in a whistleblower class action lawsuit brought against St. Jude Medical Inc in St.Paul, MN, who is accused of inflating the cost of replacement pacemakers and defibrillators purchased by the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs.
The whistleblowers will receive $730,000 from the settlement amount.
The case, filed in August 2008, alleged that St. Jude actively marketed its pacemakers and defibrillators by touting the generous credits available should a device need to be replaced while covered under warranty. At the same time, St. Jude allegedly knew that it failed to grant appropriate credits to the purchasers of devices in a large number of cases where a product was replaced while still under warranty. As a result, the United States contended that St. Jude submitted invoices to Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals and Department of Defense military treatment facilities that overstated the cost for replacement pacemakers or defibrillators.
