Litigator of the Week Runners-Up and Shout-Outs

Devora Allon, Kevin Neylan, Kevin Jonke, Jay Lefkowitz, Cole Carter, John Christian, Kasdin Mitchell, Yi Yuan, Hannah Putnam and Yaffa Meeran were recognized as runners-up for The American Lawyer Litigation Daily's "Litigator of the Week" for their work for Gilead Sciences.

"... First up this week is a Kirkland & Ellis team led by Devora Allon, who helped Gilead Sciences secure a summary judgment win last week in a False Claims Act and Anti-Kickback Statute lawsuit targeting Medicaid and Medicare payments for the company’s blockbuster hepatitis C virus drugs Sovaldi and Harvoni. U.S. District Senior Judge Cynthia Rufe in Philadelphia held that the purported whistleblower plaintiff had failed to show that Gilead’s speaker program for healthcare professionals about hepatitis C treatment was a “sham” or that it was intended to induce the speakers to prescribe the Gilead drugs. Rufe wrote that the plaintiff was “attempting to make something out of almost nothing” in raising issues about allegedly inappropriate venues where the company held the programs—something that occurred in just 3.3% of the presentations, even using the plaintiff’s own criteria. The judge further held that the plaintiff failed to show that Gilead’s contributions to a charity designed to help patients with out-of-pocket costs for treatment were intended to induce prescriptions of Sovaldi and Harvoni. The Kirkland team included Kevin Neylan, who led the briefing, Kevin Jonke, Jay Lefkowitz, Cole Carter, John Christian, Kasdin Mitchell, Yi Yuan, Hannah Putnam and Yaffa Meeran."