Bona Law Defeats RICO and Lanham Act Counterclaims for PharmacyChecker.com
February 10, 2026
Bona Law has secured another victory for its client PharmacyChecker.com in its battle against private for-profit pharmacy verification company, LegitScript. This victory is the most recent chapter in the parties’ longstanding litigation. It trails PharmacyChecker’s May 2025 Ninth Circuit win against LegitScript, where the panel rejected LegitScript’s earlier attempt to escape PharmacyChecker’s underlying antitrust claim against LegitScript by accusing PharmacyChecker of operating an illegal business.
In his January 27, 2026 decision, United States District Judge Michael Simon (D. Or) dismissed LegitScript’s counterclaims alleging that PharmacyChecker’s online statements violated the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) and Lanham Acts. LegitScript primarily asserted that PharmacyChecker—which offers online users free information services about prescription drug costs and options for online pharmacy, including those located abroad—purportedly deceived domestic consumers and potential purchasers of LegitScript’s verification services (i.e., e-commerce participants like banks and advertisers) about the safety and legality of prescription drug importation. That deception, according to LegitScript, diminished the goodwill associated with its verification services, supposedly resulting in some lost sales for such services.
In its motion to dismiss, PharmacyChecker identified numerous problems endemic to LegitScript’s claims. Chief among them, PharmacyChecker explained, was that—as a matter of law—LegitScript failed to show that the challenged statements proximately caused its purported harm.
Judge Simon agreed. He concluded that “LegitScript’s allegations of proximate cause are legally insufficient” and its failure to allege that element “dooms” both claims. Judge Simon found LegitScript’s first causal theory—that PharmacyChecker’s purported fraud on domestic consumers made it easier for domestic pharmacies to cause harm to LegitScript by not purchasing its services—was no different than that rejected by the US Supreme Court in Hemi Group LLC v. City of New York when it “refused to extend proximate cause to ‘situations where the defendant’s fraud on the third party . . . has made it easier for a fourth party . . . to cause harm to plaintiff.’”
Judge Simon then considered LegitScript’s second causal theory—namely, that the challenged statements about the legality of personal importation would lead e-commerce participants who would potentially purchase LegitScript’s verification services to believe that its services are useless. Judge Simon also found this theory lacking. Again relying on Supreme Court precedent, he explained that such harm is not “necessarily” caused by the potential purchasers’ belief in the challenged statements and further pointed out that those statements, by recognizing that drug importation is technically prohibited, may instead tend to motivate e-commerce participants to purchase LegitScript’s services.
Judge Simon ultimately permitted LegitScript leave to amend its counterclaim. But, before doing so, he identified other incurable defects in LegitScript’s causal theories that would run afoul of established Supreme Court precedent. Such defects include the presence of more direct victims better situated to sue for the purported fraud and how the reality that “businesses lose and gain customers for many reasons” would make it “nearly impossible” for LegitScript to show how the challenged statements harmed it without requiring the Court to engage in a “complex assessment” of the relative impact of the challenged statements and other potential alternative factors. As pithily put by Judge Simon, “[t]he proximate cause requirement relieves courts from this sort of guesswork.”
Bona Law partner Aaron Gott serves as lead counsel for PharmacyChecker.com, with partner Joseph Trujilllo (who argued the motion to dismiss motion) and attorney Aaron Lawrence instrumental on this most recent victory. Partner James Lerner and attorney Ruth Glaeser are also active members of the team.