SAN FRANCISCO — A St. Louis-based drug maker will pay $3.5 million to settle allegations that it paid doctors to prescribe “outdated, third rate” antidepressants and sleep aids, the U.S. attorney’s office in San Francisco announced Thursday.
A former employee of Mallinckrodt LLC originally filed the lawsuit in 2008 under the federal False Claims Act. The employee alleged that between 2005 and 2010, the company paid doctors consulting and speaking fees and other inducements in exchange for prescribing drugs that otherwise would not have been prescribed.
