August 11, 2014 by Arezu Sarvestani
A District Court Judge rules in favor of Lenox MacLaren Surgical, allowing the company to take Medtronic back to court for monopolization claims.
Lenox MacLaren Surgical is dragging Medtronic (NYSE:MDT) back into the courtroom after an appeals court ruled that Lenox has grounds to make its case against the medical device giant.
The lawsuit, not the 1st spat between the companies, accuses Medtronic of luring Lenox into a distribution deal to create a market for bone bone mill devices, planning to supplant Lenox’s technology via a false recall and replace it with its own Midas Rex mill.
A 3-judge panel at the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this month that Lenox had gathered sufficient evidence to support a finding on its claims that Medtronic had violated antitrust laws. The new decision reopens litigation which was closed last year after Judge Richard Matsch of the U.S. District Court for Colorado ruled that Lenox failed to make its case.
Lenox MacLaren Surgical 1st inked a distribution deal with Medtronic in 2000 for its bone mill devices, hoping the pact would provide the scale to put the products in every orthopedic surgical suite in the world, according to court documents. The deal allegedly came to naught after Medtronic only bought the 500 mills the contract called for, using a loaner program to create a thriving demand even as it worked to develop its own mill to usurp the Lenox MacLaren device, according to a lawsuit Lenox MacLaren filed in the fall of 2012.
