*

Judge said no evidence to support claims of kickbacks on

Harvoni, Sovaldi

*

Whistleblower will appeal, his lawyers say

*

Gilead settled claims of kickbacks on HIV drugs earlier

this

year

By Diana Novak Jones

Sept 12 (Reuters) - A federal judge in Pennsylvania

rejected a former Gilead Sciences sales representative's claims

that the company paid kickbacks to doctors and patients to boost

prescriptions of its hepatitis C drugs Sovaldi and Harvoni.

In a ruling on Thursday, U.S. District Judge Cynthia Rufe in

Philadelphia sided with Gilead in the whistleblower lawsuit

brought by its former employee Toby Travis, finding that Travis

hadn't proven his claims that Gilead used speaker programs and

charitable donations to hide payments to doctors and patients

meant to induce them to write and fill prescriptions for the

drugs.

She also rejected his argument that Gilead's April agreement

to pay $202 million to settle a whistleblower lawsuit accusing

it of paying kickbacks to doctors who agreed to prescribe its

HIV drugs could bolster his claims, saying Gilead's admissions

in that case didn't apply to its actions with Sovaldi and

Harvoni.

James Miller, an attorney for Travis, said they plan to

appeal the ruling and expect it to be reversed.

A spokesperson for Gilead said the company's speaker

programs serve to educate healthcare professionals about the

medicines, and the donations to charitable foundations help

patients access treatments they need.

Travis, who was a sales representative for Gilead's

hepatitis C drugs between 2013 and 2014, filed his whistleblower

lawsuit in 2017. He accused the company of violating the

anti-kickback statute and the False Claims Act, saying that

prescriptions submitted to Medicare for reimbursement as a

result of the kickbacks constituted fraud.

He claimed the company was using a sham speaker program,

which hired healthcare providers to give presentations about its

drugs, as a way to push doctors to write more prescriptions for

its hepatitis C drugs and reward high prescribers. He also

accused Gilead of using donations to a program meant to help

low-income patients afford co-payments for drugs to induce those

patients to use Harvoni and Sovaldi specifically.

In 2019, the U.S. declined to intervene in the action.

Gilead urged Rufe to throw out Travis' claims, claiming he

had no evidence to support them. The company also asked Rufe to

sanction Travis, accusing him of knowingly trying to defraud the

court by pursuing baseless claims.

In her ruling on Thursday, Rufe declined to sanction Travis

but agreed that despite years of discovery, his evidence was

"flimsy." There was no evidence that Gilead was hiring specific

doctors based on their prescription numbers, she said, and the

donations Gilead made to the charitable foundation were far

larger than what the foundation spent on the company's hepatitis

C drugs.

The case is United States v. Gilead Sciences Inc ( GILD ), U.S.

District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, No.

2:17-cv-01183.

For Travis: James Shah, Natalie Finkelman, Bruce Parke, Alec

Berin, James Miller and Nathan Zipperian of Miller Shah; David

Caputo and John Crutchlow of Youman & Caputo; and John Gross of

the Weiser Law Firm

For Gilead: Molly Flynn of Barnes & Thornburg; Devora Allon,

Jay Lefkowitz, Kevin Neylan and Kevin Jonke of Kirkland & Ellis;

and Will Sears of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan

(Reporting by Diana Novak Jones in Chicago)