More Legal Action on “Ohio Drug Price Relief Act”

On August 15, 2016, the Supreme Court of Ohio issued a decision in an action brought by the OMA, the Ohio Chamber and PhRMA challenging petition circulation practices in connection with the Ohio Drug Price Relief Act.  The court held, among other things, that that thousands of part-petitions submitted by the committee backing the proposal contained false circulator attestations, did not comply with Ohio law, and contained an overcounting of signatures that constituted “an open invitation to fraud.”  Ultimately, the court determined that “OMA has demonstrated that 10,303 signatures that were counted as valid should not have been counted” and found that the petition was short by 5,044 signatures.

Two days after the court issued its decision, the committee filed a mandamus action in the Supreme Court of Ohio seeking to recover more than 25,000 signatures that had previously been stricken by the Secretary and county boards of elections because signatures had been deleted by persons not authorized to do so.

Because the OMA, the Ohio Chamber, and PhRMA have a substantial interest in defending the judgment they obtained in the Challenge Proceeding, they jointly filed an amicus curiae brief in this lawsuit which concluded:  “This new mandamus action is the wrong proceeding, at the wrong time, and seeks the wrong remedy.”  Here’s a summary of the filed brief by OMA counsel, Bricker & Eckler.  8/30/2016