One of the largest FCA judgments in history handed down against Janssen Products

2025 False Claims Act Judgment Against Janssen Products

On March 31, 2025, a federal court in New Jersey entered a $1.64 billion False Claims Act judgment against Janssen Products, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson. The whistleblowers—two sales representatives who had worked for the company—alleged that Janssen had illegally marketed two HIV medications (Prezista and Intelence) off-label.

After a twelve-week jury trial last year, the jury found that Janssen had caused the submission of almost 160,000 false claims to the United States, resulting in $120 million in actual damages.  By law, any damages awarded at trial are trebled, so the judge increased the damage award to $360 million.

Another feature of the False Claims Act is that, in addition to actual damages, the Court can impose a financial penalty for each false claim submitted. In this case, the Court imposed a penalty of $8,000 for each of the 159,574 claims submitted, bringing the total damage award to the final number of $1.64 billion.

There is a reasonable chance that Janssen will appeal this judgment, both with respect to liability and the award of damages, and there are several interesting issues that may arise on appeal. In particular, Janssen may argue that the penalties in this case (which account for more than $1.2 billion of the $1.6 billion judgment) violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against “excessive fines.” Courts have sometimes held that penalties in a qui tam action are unconstitutional when they are “grossly disproportional” to the actual damages and the gravity of the defendant’s conduct.

Such cases have most often arisen when the actual damages are small and the penalties large.  Here, in contrast, both the underlying damages and the penalties are huge. The law in this area is still developing, so this case will be one to watch if Janssen does ultimately appeal the judgment, as it is widely expected to do.