Boston, MA 10/23/2013 (wallstreetpr) – Over the last three months, Boston Scientific Corporation (NYSE:BSX) has traded an average of 15 million shares a day. However on Monday October 21, the company traded just 9 million shares but managed to set a 52 week high of $12.48 and has a low of $5.04. This is a 3.45% gain in the last week.
Despite the favorable week, the company has been facing quite a lengthy court battle. In 2006 BSX acquired Guidant at a cost of $27.5 billion. Guidant was specializing in renewal devices and other Medicare related devices. From 2002 to 2005, Guidant reportedly sold defective health equipment to health facilities that were later implanted into patients. Now being a part of BSX, the company had to indulge into the court cases to try and correct the errors.
In 2007 the company paid $240 million to thousands of patients who had sued Guidant. To date, the company has paid in excess of $500 million in a bid to settle the civil and criminal law suits that keep coming. Among the defective equipment are cardiac defibrillators and prizms.
Overtime the company has denied any involvement but in the latest court case filed by the US government under the false claims act saw the company cough up an extra $30 million in a bid to end the thousands of court cases against the company.
However it’s difficult to say if this latest development will be the end of this roller coaster. The company on its website posted that to date, 83 malfunctions and 9 reported deaths had been reported due to the defibrillators and a further 40 malfunctions and 5 patients had been reported because of the prizms. The scarier part is that the company states that a total of 500 renewal devices and 1,400 prizms are still implanted in patients. It is therefore worthwhile to wait and see what events will occur later on.
