As of March 3, Solvay Pharmaceuticals is ready to second P.T. Barnum’s famous dictum that there’s no such thing as bad publicity.  That’s the day a federal court in Texas dismissed a qui tam action against Solvay.

The whistleblowers filed suit in June 2003, claiming that Solvay paid kickbacks to physicians to increase off-label sales of Solvay product AndroGel.  But—and here’s where Barnum’s dictum comes in—Solvay argued that the plaintiffs couldn’t be considered “original sources” because the allegations had already been publicized.  For example, in 2002 The New Yorker told the whole story in an article titled “Hormones for Men: Is Male Menopause a Question of Medicine or of Marketing?”

The judge read the article and concluded, “This article alone, without considering the others, is enough to put the FDA on the trail of the fraud.”  He granted Solvay’s motion to dismiss.

The case is U.S. ex rel. King v. Solvay, 4:06-cv-02662, 2015 BL 55877 (S.D.Tex. Mar. 3).