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With over 40 years of experience litigating, trying, and winning multi-million dollar cases across the country, Shapiro Haber & Urmy LLP a Boston-based boutique litigation firm, has long been a national leader in the field of complex, high-stakes litigation. Each of our attorneys has the educational background, expertise, and creativity to litigate against the largest, most prominent law firms in the country - and win. As a result, we have recovered hundreds of millions of dollars for individuals and businesses across the United States.
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Shapiro Haber & Urmy Obtains Certification of a Nationwide Class of Buyers of VSL#3 Under RICO and State Consumer Statutes
Shapiro Haber & Urmy and its co-counsel Schulman Bhattacharya recently secured a major victory in a RICO case pending in the United States District Court for the District of Maryland alleging that three pharmaceutical companies defrauded consumers by falsely advertising the probiotic medical food VSL#3, obtaining certification of nationwide and state classes of purchasers of VSL#3. Shapiro Haber & Urmy’s success was further confirmed when the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit promptly denied the pharmaceutical companies’ Rule 23(f) petition to appeal the District Court’s class certification decision.
The case concerns two different formulations of VSL#3 licensed, marketed and sold by Defendants VSL Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (“VSL”), Leadiant Biosciences, Inc., and Alfasigma USA, Inc. Plaintiffs, buyers of VSL#3 from June 2016 to the present, allege that after a falling out between the inventor of the original VSL#3-branded probiotic formulation (the “De Simone Formulation”) and VSL, Defendants devised a new formulation, which imitated, but was materially different from, the De Simone Formulation, and sold it as “VSL#3” (the “Fraudulent Formulation”).
Plaintiffs assert that Defendants engaged in a coordinated campaign of false advertising, promising consumers that the Fraudulent Formulation they marketed and sold was clinically proven and contained the De Simone Formulation, when they knew it did not, in violation of the federal RICO statute and various state laws, including state consumer protection statutes. Plaintiffs further allege that they and other consumers across the country purchased the Fraudulent Formulation, suffering economic harm as a result.
The District Court granted Plaintiffs’ motion for class certification holding, among other things, that common issues predominated as to causation and injury. The District Court explained:
The plaintiffs maintain in this putative class action that the defendants misrepresented to them, and other purchasers of VSL#3, that the current formulation of VSL#3 sold during the class period was the same as the De Simone Formulation of VSL#3. Given this, the alleged injury is the same for the plaintiffs and the proposed class members, because they all allegedly purchased a product that was not the one that they expected, based upon the defendants' alleged misrepresentations.
The class certification decision constituted another important victory for the Plaintiffs (following their previous success defeating Defendants’ motion to dismiss) in this long-running, hard-fought litigation, particularly given the challenges the Defendants had identified to certifying a nationwide consumer class in a RICO case.
Click here to view the Decision and Order.