North Carolina Federal District Court Confirms Importance of Alleging Actual Harm in Pleadings

On April 25, 2012, a federal judge in North Carolina issued a ruling granting in part and denying in part motions to dismiss involving claims for trade secret misappropriation, breach of contract, and conversion in a dispute between two pharmaceutical companies in the case of River’s Edge Pharmaceuticals v. Gorbec Pharmaceutical Services, Inc. This decision confirms, to an extent, the need to plead actual, rather than speculative harm to prevent dismissal for failure to state a claim.

River’s Edge Pharmaceuticals (“River’s Edge”) is a company which distributes pharmaceutical products and aims to provide “reasonably priced alternatives to costly name brand pharmaceuticals.” The company began marketing and developing certain alleged unapproved pharmaceutical products through an FDA approved process known as Drug Efficacy Study Implementation (“DESI”).

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