Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited, et al. v. Painters and Allied Trades District Council 82 Health Care Fund, et al.

This petition involves a putative nationwide class action under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (“RICO”), in which respondents seek treble-damages refunds of all payments they made for Actos, a prescription drug marketed by petitioners. Respondents are Actos patients and a third-party payor who allege that petitioners failed to disclose that Actos increases the risk of bladder cancer for a small, defined subset of patients. But respondents make no claim that Actos was ineffective or that they (or any patients they reimbursed) suffered a personal injury. Rather, respondents’ sole theory is that they would not have paid for Actos had petitioners fully disclosed the risk. The questions presented, each of which is the subject of an entrenched, broadly acknowledged, several-circuit split, are:

1. Whether the chain of causation between a manufacturer’s allegedly false or misleading statements or omissions and end payments for prescription drugs is too attenuated to satisfy RICO’s proximate cause requirement, given that every prescription-drug payment depends on numerous intervening factors, including a doctor’s independent decision to prescribe.

2. Whether everyone who pays for a product with an alleged latent risk or defect necessarily suffers injury sufficient to confer Article III standing, even where the product is fully consumed, provides the bargained-for benefits, and causes no ill effects. (i)