The U.S. Department of Justice has joined a lawsuit against Pfizer and its subsidiary Wyeth Pharmaceuticals over the alleged illegal marketing of the drug Rapamune. The suit claimed the company tried to market Rapamune, which is taken by kidney transplant patients, as beneficial to “heart, lung, liver and pancreas transplants” without FDA approval. The suit stemmed from a whistle-blower complaint filed in 2005. Pfizer has recently been the target of similar cases, settling for $2.3 billion in a suit last year.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled 7-2 to further restrict the grounds on which whistle-blower lawsuits can be brought on behalf of the U.S. government. The ruling revolved around a portion of the False Claims Act, which allows ordinary citizens to help the government uncover and fight fraudulent contracts. One portion of the law prohibits whistle-blower suits brought on by information already public “in a congressional, administrative or Government Accounting Office report, hearing, audit or investigation.” The Department of Justice argued that that stipulation only covered federal reports, not reports at the state or local level, but the Supreme Court disagreed. The majority justices ruled that “administrative” reports covered state and local audits as well as federal audits

The former Oklahoma chief medical examiner says he plans to file a whistleblower lawsuit over claims he was fired from his job for reporting gross errors in the state grand jury investigation that brought criminal charges against the man he replaced nine months ago. Dr. Collie M. Trant said he was not made aware at all that his job was in jeopardy and wants his job and reputation back. According to the lawsuit, Trant said that the chief administrative officer for the medical examiner�??s office, Tom Jordan, had “set me up to fail.”

A Texas nurse who thought she was doing the right thing in reporting a doctor that was practicing bad medicine is now standing trial for �??misuse of official information�?� and could face serious jail time. The prosecution claims that Anne Mitchell has a history of making �??inflammatory comments�?� about Dr. Rolando G. Arafiles Jr.; Mitchell says that it is her obligation as a nurse to report Arafiles to the Texas Medical Board after she witnessed a pattern of �??improper prescribing and surgical procedures.�?� Mitchell�??s attorneys say she should be protected under state whistleblower laws.

A whistleblower lawsuit unsealed this week in Dallas accuses medical device manufacturer Guidant of marketing biliary stents to doctors for uses not approved by the Food and Drug Administration. In the lawsuit, Kevin N. Colquitt claimed that while he was employed with Guidant, he was instructed to market the stents to treat blocked blood vessels when they were designed to treat digestive cancers. The F.D.A. approval process for stents used in blood vessels is much more rigorous than the biliary devices marked by Guidant, the New York Times reported.

A four-year lawsuit initially brought on by a whistleblower against Lourdes Medical Center of Burlington County, Penn., was settled this week. Lourdes Health System agreed to pay the federal government $7.9 million to settle claims against two of its Philadelphia suburb hospitals, Lourdes Medical and Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center, who allegedly inflated charges to Medicare patients to obtain �outlier� payments from the government. Hospital officials said that the settlement funds will not adversely impact hospital

In a closely watched case, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday began considering arguments over whistleblower lawsuits filed under the federal False Claims Act, USA Today reports. At issue in the case is whether such lawsuits should be blocked if whistleblowers bring their claim based on public information available in a state or local report. Currently, False Claims Act suits are only barred if the claims were gleaned from federal public disclosures such as congressional reports, audits or investigations.

Lockheed Martin Corp. knowingly used substandard equipment to build F-22 Raptor stealth jets, according to a whistleblower lawsuit filed by a former engineer for the defense contractor. In the lawsuit, Darrol Olsen claims he was fired after complaining to supervisors that the company used defective stealth coatings on jets built between September 1995 and June 1999. The lawsuit asks Lockheed to pay $50 million for each of 183 F-22s built during that period.

An alarming number of nurses say hospitals are not as safe or sanitary as they should be, a new survey by Consumer Reports� has concluded. Among the survey�s findings: about 28 percent of nurses saw problems with hospital cleanliness; about 38 percent of nurses report problems with patient care; and about 26 percent of nurses said hospital staff members sometime did not wash their hands.

Critics of the proposed whistleblower-protection bill under development by the Obama administration and Congress contend it will have a chilling effect on those inside the intelligence community who seek to expose wrong-doing. Although new protections are included for other whistleblowers, employees of the Federal Bureau of Investigation would no longer be able to bring their wrongful termination or demotion cases before the Justice Department�s inspector general.