The largest-ever class action lawsuit filed in New Hampshire history charges cigarette maker Philip Morris with using deceptive marketing practices to sell "Marlboro Lights" cigarettes. Plaintiffs say PM engaged in consumer fraud (pdf) by representing "Marlboro Light" cigarettes as having lower tar and nicotine than regular cigarettes, when in fact the tobacco was identical. The suit also alleges that PM developed a way to fool the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) smoking machines (that are used to measure tar and nicotine) into registering lower levels of tar and nicotine than smokers actually get when they smoke so-called "light" cigarettes. FTC uses the machines to determine whether cigarettes can be marketed using phrases like "Light," "Ultralight," or "Lowered Tar and Nicotine." The lead plaintiff in the suit, Karen Lawrence of Manchester, smoked an average of one-and-a-half to two packs of Marlboro Lights per day for 30 years, after switching from regular Marlboros, believing that light cigarettes carried reduced risks to her health. Plaintiffs are asking PM to refund the money they spent on Marlboro Lights, plus triple the amount of any actual damages, or $1,000 per class member. Members of the class include everyone in New Hampshire who bought Marlboro Lights since the company first started selling them in 1971.

Drug maker Novartis paid current and former sports figures, like New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning and Baseball Hall-of-Famer Johnny Bench, from $8,000 and $35,000 per appearance to show up at company-sponsored doctor-dinners, give short speeches, answer questions about their careers and pose with doctors for individual photos. Afterwards, Novartis sales reps would bring the photos with them when they called on the doctors to sell their products. Sometimes the sports figures would sign memorabilia that the doctors brought with them to the dinner. Novartis spent a total of $3.6 million on the sports figure drug marketing program between 2006 and 2009. "I hope someone at the company got a fat bonus, because this is one of the most clever schemes I've seen to provide gifts to doctors," said Paul Thacker an investigator for the Project on Government Oversight, who studies the financial relationships between doctors and drug companies. "If you shove a bag of cash in a doctor's pocket, he might feel like a common streetwalker, but if you give him a picture of his childhood idol, then he might feel like everyone is just being pals," he said.

The U. S. Department of Justice recovered $3 billion for American taxpayers as a result of civil lawsuits brought after whistleblowers came forward to report on pharmaceutical companies' illegal activities. The payout is the largest health fraud settlement in U.S. history. Drug maker Pfizer pled guilty to felony violations of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act and was fined $2.3 billion (that's "billion" with a "b") for aggressively marketing its painkiller Bextra far beyond uses approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Bextra was pulled from the market in 2005 due to safety risks. AstraZeneca paid $302 million for cajoling doctors into writing prescriptions for unapproved uses of its anti-psychotic drug Seroquel, including urging doctors to use it for treatment of insomnia, anger management and post-traumatic stress disorder. AstraZeneca also paid kickbacks to doctors as part of the illegal scheme to market the Seroquel for unapproved uses. The government also recouped $192 million from Novartis and $108 million from the Health Alliance of Greater Cincinnati and its former member-hospital, The Christ Hospital, for misconduct under the health care Anti-Kickback Statute.