Cardinal Health Must Face Whistleblower’s ‘Rent-A-Vet’ Claims

Cardinal Health Inc. must again defend itself against a whistleblower’s suit alleging that the company engaged in a “rent-a-vet” scheme with service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses to improperly win set-aside radiopharmaceutical drug supply contracts from the Department of Veterans Affairs, according Ninth Circuit ruling issued Tuesday.

Whistleblower UPPI LLC adequately alleged that those small business defendants submitted invoices identifying themselves as the procuring entities when in reality Cardinal Health supplied the drugs for which the VA was invoiced, meaning the the small businesses were merely window-dressing, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said in a nonprecedential decision to ...