Silbersher v. Allergan plc

Background

Zachary Silbersher brought this action for the United States and numerous states under the federal False Claims Act and state false-claims laws. He alleged that the Allergan and Adamas defendants misled the Patent Office into issuing invalid patents for Namenda XR and Namzaric. According to the allegations, those patents blocked generic competition, allowed the defendants to charge monopoly prices, and caused the federal government and states to pay inflated prices through programs including Medicare and Medicaid.

Silbersher alleged that he was an “original source” under the False Claims Act. The statute’s public-disclosure rule generally requires dismissal when substantially the same allegations or transactions have already been publicly disclosed, unless the government opposes dismissal or the relator qualifies as an original source. After an earlier appeal, the Ninth Circuit held that a patent examination is a federal hearing covered by the public-disclosure rule and sent the case back for the district court to decide whether Silbersher was an original source.

The parties’ arguments

Allergan and Adamas argued that Silbersher’s specialized patent expertise was not enough to make him an original source. They contended that he had not identified specific historical facts about the alleged fraud that he independently knew and provided to the government. Silbersher argued that he had provided six categories of information, including alleged misrepresentations about clinical-study results, the relevance of an earlier patent, the effect of the defendants’ patent statements, and the role of the patents in blocking generic competitors.

Court’s analysis

The court concluded that the patent prosecution histories publicly disclosed the material elements of the alleged fraud. It further concluded that the information Silbersher identified consisted of conclusions drawn by applying his specialized expertise to those public records. The court held that this type of expertise did not constitute knowledge independent of the public disclosures and did not materially add to them under the False Claims Act’s current original-source definition.

The court therefore found that Silbersher was not an original source and that his federal claims against all defendants were barred by the public-disclosure rule. Because the court resolved the original-source issue as a matter of law, it did not reach the defendants’ separate argument that Silbersher had failed to plausibly allege that he supplied qualifying information.

Disposition

Judge Joseph C. Spero granted the Allergan and Adamas motions to dismiss. The court ruled that the complaint could not be cured by amendment and dismissed all federal claims with prejudice. It declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction—the court’s authority to hear related state-law claims—over the state claims. Those claims were dismissed without prejudice, and the Clerk was instructed to enter judgment reflecting both dispositions.

The amended order clarified that the earlier order granting the motions addressed only the federal claims and did not decide whether the state-law claims were barred.