Appellate Court Upholds First DataBank Settlement

Skadden has secured an important appellate victory for firm client First DataBank Inc. Pharmacy industry groups had filed expedited appeals to overturn the recently approved class settlement (also negotiated by Skadden) reached in average wholesale price litigation brought against First DataBank, a drug information publisher, by a plaintiff class of consumers, health care plans and other third-party payors. The pharmacy industry groups claimed that a rollback feature of the settlement would cause revenue losses for pharmacies. On September 3, 2009, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit agreed that the "pharmacy interests could stand to lose revenues," but went on to rule that "as the record stands, the rollback — taken by itself — was within the ambit of reasonable choices available to the district judge,” thus affirming the District Court's approval of the settlement.