• by Tanya Gazdik , March 30, 2025

Johnson & Johnson unit Janssen has been ordered to pay the U.S. government $1.64 billion in an HIV drug marketing case involving the marketing of Prezista and Intelence.

“U.S. District Judge Zahid Quraishi in Trenton, New Jersey, ordered the drugmaker's Janssen unit to pay $360 million for violating the federal False Claims Act,” according to CNBC. “He also imposed $1.28 billion in civil fines, or $8,000 for each of 159,574 false claims the jury found were submitted to programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and the AIDS Drug Assistance Program. Quraishi set aside the jury's $30 million award for violations of various state false claims laws, citing a lack of evidence.”

The $360 million portion of the award is three times the $120 million the jury awarded under the federal False Claims Act, which allows triple damages.

Janssen is seeking a new trial, saying the verdict was tainted by a lack of proof and by erroneous jury instructions, according to Reuters.

“The plaintiffs, Jessica Penelow and Christine Brancaccio, who were former Janssen sales representatives, accused Janssen of inappropriately marketing Prezista and Intelence for uses not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA),” according to investing.com. “This included promoting Prezista as ‘lipid-neutral,’ which implies it would not impact cholesterol or triglyceride levels, contrary to its FDA-approved label. The plaintiffs also claimed that Janssen compensated doctors to endorse the drugs at dinner and speaker events, with the payments amounting to kickbacks.”

This is the second whistleblower case involving Prezista and Intelence marketing. The first concluded in June 2024 when the company was ordered to pay a $150 million guilty verdict in the case, which dated back to 2012, according to FiercePharma.

Johnson & Johnson is still fighting over the $10 billion baby powder settlement.

“J&J is attempting to use a subsidiary's bankruptcy to resolve lawsuits from more than 62,000 plaintiffs alleging its baby powder and other talc products were contaminated with asbestos and caused ovarian and other cancers, a claim that J&J denies,” according to Reuters.