Sorrell v. IMS Health Inc.
United States Supreme Court
564 U.S. 552, 131 S. Ct. 2653 (2011)
- Written by David Schleider, JD
Facts
Drug companies in the pharmaceutical industry utilized a marketing and sales strategy referred to as detailing. Detailing involved a company sending a salesperson to visit a doctor’s office and providing the doctor with a list of details about the drug being sold. In order to focus their marketing efforts, pharmaceutical companies purchased prescriber-identifying information from pharmacies to help determine which doctors were most likely to prescribe patients with the companies’ drugs. A Vermont statute prohibited pharmaceutical companies from, among other things, using prescriber-identifying information in their marketing practices. IMS Health Inc. (plaintiff) challenged the Vermont statute as an unconstitutional, content-based regulation of speech.
Rule of Law
Issue
Holding and Reasoning (Kennedy, J.)
Dissent (Breyer, J.)
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