Appellate Court Affirms Summary Judgment in Federal Civil Rights Case

Plaintiff, Hybrid Pharma, LLC, is a an outsourcing facility—a facility other than a licensed pharmacy that performs drug compounding, which is mixing ingredients to tailor a drug to the needs of an individual patient but in a way that does not accord with the manufacturer’s labeling and directions. In June 2022, Plaintiff filed this civil rights lawsuit against Defendants, who were the Florida Department of Health’s (“FDOH”) Chief of the Bureau of Enforcement, the FDOH’s former Chief of the Bureau of Enforcement, and the FDOH’s Pharmaceutical Program Manager within the Bureau of Enforcement. Plaintiff raised one count against each Defendant for violation of Plaintiff’s equal protection rights under the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution, asserting that Defendants treated Plaintiff differently than similarly situated outsourcing facilities. The Trial Court granted Summary Judgment in favor of the Defendants on the basis that Plaintiff was unable to present any evidence of any similarly situated comparators, an essential element of its “Class of One” Equal Protection Claim. Plaintiff appealed to the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, which affirmed the summary judgment. Bradley A. Silverman and Michael Dono were the lawyers from HM&B who successfully defended the appeal