A Medical Device Daily

Healthcare software providerQuovadx (Greenwood Village, Colorado) reported reaching agreements to settle lawsuits that arose from its 2004 restatement of historical financial results, making total payments of more than $7 million.

Total payments will be $10.6 million, of which $7 million will be paid by the company's insurance carriers and $3.6 million paid by the company.

“We're pleased to put these legacy issues behind us,“ said Harvey Wagner, CEO of Quovadx, adding that the settlements “allow us to continue to invest in new business and product initiatives as we focus on growing our business.“

On April 4, the company reached a settlement agreement with lead plaintiffs in the class action Heller v. Quovadx, Inc., et al, filed on June 10, 2004, and pending in federal court in the district of Colorado.

Under the terms, the plaintiffs will receive $10 million in exchange for the release of the company and the individual defendants of all claims.

Quovadx will pay $3 million, and its insurance carriers have agreed to pay $7 million, into a settlement fund.

The company also reached an agreement in principle in the derivative actions pending in state court in Arapahoe County, Colorado. The company will pay $575,000 and make certain governance changes for full release of all state law claims.

A third lawsuit which arose out of the company's 2004 restatement of financial results, Henderson v. Quovadx, Inc., et al, filed in March 2004, is still pending.

Quovadx offers software and services to companies in the healthcare, financial services, telecommunication and public sectors. Quovadx has three divisions, including the Integration Solutions division, which offers private and public healthcare organizations software infrastructure; the CareScience division, which provides care management and analytical solutions to hospitals; and the Rogue Wave Software division, which provides software and services for enterprise-class application development.

Eye products company Ciba Vision (Duluth, Georgia), a unit of Novartis (Basel, Switzerland) and the second largest maker of contact lenses, is suing to block the sale of Acuvue lenses by Johnson & Johnson (New Brunswick, New Jersey), claiming violations of its patents.

Ciba claims that J&J's Acuvue Oasys With Hydraclear Plus infringe its patent for extended-wear contact lenses. The suit was filed earlier this week in federal court in Jacksonville, Florida.

J&J, the world's No. 1 lens manufacturer, markets the Acuvue Oasys for “dry and tired“ eyes. The company's Vistakon unit (Jacksonville) began selling Acuvue Oasys lenses in August after a U.S. judge denied a request by Ciba to keep the lenses off the market while another suit was pending. That case involved five patents not at the center of the new suit.

Ciba and J&J also are involved in patent litigation concerning the Acuvue and Acuvue Advanced lenses.

In other legalities:

• QLT (Vancouver, British Columbia) reported that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has stayed the injunction against the manufacture and sale of QLT USA 's Eligard products that was entered on Feb. 27.

The court of appeals previously had temporarily stayed the injunction while it was considering the motion for a stay filed by QLT USA and co-defendant Sanofi-Synthelabo (Le Pressis Robinson, France), QLT USA's marketing partner for Eligard. Following the earlier injunction, Sanofi-Synthelabo said it was discontinuing Eligard sales in the U.S. (Medical Device Daily, March 9, 2006) until expiry of the patent on May 1 – the subject of the litigation with TAP Pharmaceuticals Products (Paris).

Sanofi-Synthelabo now has advised QLT USA it will re-launch Eligard in a limited manner in “the public interest.“

QLT USA's appeal of the judgment on liability in favor of TAP Pharmaceutical and co-plaintiffs continues.

QLT develops drug therapies with its two technology platforms, photodynamic therapy and Atrigel, to create products such as Visudyne and Eligard.

• The marketers of Pedia Loss, a purported children's weight-loss product, and Fabulously Feminine, a supposed female libido enhancement, have agreed to settle FTC charges that they made false and misleading claims about their products.

The FTC said the defendants could not support claims that Pedia Loss causes weight loss in overweight or obese children, or that it suppresses appetite, increases fat burning and slows carbohydrate absorption. And it charged that the defendants could not support its claims that Fabulously Feminine will increase a woman's libido.

The defendants are Vineet Chhabra and his companies, Dynamic Health of Florida , and Chhabra Group (both Weston, Florida).

The agreement requires the defendants to rely on scientific evidence to substantiate any health claims for the products and to provide record keeping for monitoring compliance.

• Odyssey HealthCare (Dallas) reported that the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas has entered an order dismissing with prejudice all of the claims against the company and certain current and former executives in the shareholder class action complaint filed in April 2004 and then consolidated with other similar federal lawsuits. The court's opinion examined each of the allegations in the amended and consolidated complaint and determined that they stated no viable claim against any defendant. The court also denied plaintiffs' request to further amend their complaint.

"We look forward to putting this issue behind us and moving forward with our business initiatives," said Robert Lefton, president and CEO of Odyssey.

Odyssey has 80 Medicare-certified hospice programs in 30 states.