The Trump Justice Department, following a tougher policy toward dubious False Claims Act lawsuits by private citizens, has moved to dismiss a pair of lawsuits by a former hedge-fund manager who shorted stock in pharmaceutical companies he accused of a wide-ranging price-fixing conspiracy.
In qui tam lawsuits filed in 2014 and 2015, Dr. John Borzelleri, a physician-turned-securities analyst, sketched out a complicated scheme under which drug manufacturers like AbbVie, Amgen, Novartis and Pfizer paid excessive “service fees” to pharmacy benefit managers including Aetna, CVS and ExpressScripts to keep prices artificially high.