The MSP plaintiffs are at it once more, and with out success this time round. In MSP Restoration Claims Sequence LLC v. Pfizer Inc., 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 38647 (D.D.C. Mar. 4, 2025), the group of regulation companies shaped to file lawsuits beneath the Medicare Secondary Payer Act (therefore the “MSP” within the numerous plaintiffs’ names) sued a drug producer and different defendants alleging vaguely that payers who assigned their rights to the plaintiffs had been defrauded within the buy of pharmaceuticals. As might be seen, that was not adequate to state a declare.
The MSP plaintiffs acquired their begin by buying the rights of personal Medicare Benefit payers to pursue reimbursement from major payers beneath the Medicare Secondary Payer Act. They centered initially on the Medicare Secondary Payer Act’s personal proper of motion, however they’ve branched out since to RICO and different statutory claims. We’ve got introduced you a number of examples, together with right here, right here, right here, and right here.
Their report currently shouldn’t be good, and within the view of at the least one district decide, they’re carrying out their welcome in our federal courts. Based on this decide, these plaintiffs (basically “assignee debt collectors”) have “little incentive on the entrance finish” to guage their claims and as an alternative “rush to file litigation” within the hope that one thing sticks. MSP Restoration, at *2-*3. This strategy “shouldn’t be sitting properly with many judges . . . and has garnered harsh criticism from courts throughout the nation,” the place these plaintiffs are “consuming huge judicial assets . . . and imposing monumental burdens on the [judicial] system.” Id. at *3.
Gosh decide, why don’t you inform us how you actually really feel?
With this heat up, we commend the court docket for its persistence in permitting these plaintiffs three possibilities to plead legitimate claims. However alas, even with that latitude, the plaintiffs couldn’t do it. The court docket beforehand dismissed your entire criticism for lack of standing after which dismissed RICO claims within the First Amended Grievance for failure to state a declare. Because of this, the Second Amended Grievance alleged solely state-law shopper fraud, widespread regulation fraud, and unfair commerce practices claims. Id. at *3-*4.
The district court docket dismissed these claims, too. To start out, the plaintiffs had no standing to carry claims in opposition to defendants with relationships solely in Rhode Island and California as a result of the plaintiffs didn’t allege that any of the topic medication had been bought in Rhode Island or California. Because the court docket dominated, courts dispense standing to particular plaintiffs and particular claims, to not “teams of plaintiffs ‘in gross.’” The court docket additional held that the plaintiffs had no standing beneath Delaware’s legal guidelines as a result of the plaintiffs didn’t allege that any of their assignors was injured in Delaware. One assignor/payer had enrollees in Delaware, however the plaintiff didn’t allege that the assignor ever paid for the topic medication in Delaware, and even that they had been prescribed there. No standing. Id. at *7-*8.
The place the plaintiffs did have standing, they failed to satisfy Rule 9(b)’s heightened pleading normal. The plaintiffs’ claims clearly sounded in fraud: The Second Amended Grievance centered on alleged false and fraudulent statements, and though the plaintiffs alleged that the defendants’ alleged conduct ran afoul of different public coverage issues, the underlying factual allegations all the time got here again to alleged false and misleading statements.
The plaintiffs subsequently needed to plead their claims with particularity, which they didn’t accomplish: “Though the amendments add size and recharacterize the identical factual allegations to make them appear worse, they ‘are prolonged, [but] not particular.” Id. at *11.
“Prolonged, however not particular.” In different phrases, the plaintiffs mentioned loads, however they didn’t present the who, what, when, and the place of the alleged fraudulent statements or conduct. They emphasised sure extra particular allegations of their Second Amended Grievance, however the court docket noticed these paragraphs merely as conclusory assertions of data and intent, with out the information to again them up.
The court docket subsequently dismissed all of the remaining claims and did so with prejudice. This was the plaintiffs’ third strive at pleading and their second alternative to amend. Furthermore, the “events have undergone three rounds of briefing with a whole lot of pages and tens of hundreds of phrases spent on the motions to dismiss alone. And because the Courtroom has already outlined, this isn’t the plaintiffs’ ‘first rodeo.’” Id. at *13-*14. As they are saying in locations the place rodeos flourish, “This canine don’t hunt.”