Theranos Inc. was sued by Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. due to claims that it violated an agreement related to a scandal, starting from faulty blood-testing claims. The drugstore chain filed the lawsuit under seal in Delaware, in the U.S. District Court. According to the lawyers representing Walgreens, details of the suit will remain confidential, due to the terms of the contract they signed with Theranos back in 2009.
However, some of the reasons of the lawsuit are clear: the faulty blood results led, in some of the cases, to heart attacks and another number of health issues, and the sued company is also accused of fraud, from the part of an investor.
The contract marked the two companies' collaboration in order to assure testing at some of the retail stores. Theranos built blood-testing stations as part of the partnership, calling them wellness centers and extending them to 40 Walgreens pharmacies in Arizona and Palo Alto.
From Partnership To Lawsuit
The pharmacy chain found a way to help the consumers access supposedly less invasive and more affordable blood testing means. The CEO of the startup, Elizabeth Holmes, explained her blood testing device would perform a number of tests with only a few drops of blood.
After she appeared on Forbes' top of wealthiest self-made women in the U.S. as her company was worth $9 billion, Holmes' financial situation will go down the drain, in the event she will lose the law suit.
Back in May 2016, Theranos made it public that the results of tens of thousands of blood tests would be retracted, regardless of the fact that doctors and medically competent agents had relied on those results when administering patient care and medication for two years.
In June 2016, Walgreens stated that the end of the collaboration with Theranos had come, closing all the blood-draw sites in the stores it owned. The pharmacy chain is currently a defendant in lawsuits that patients started against Theranos. In October 2016, Theranos announced shutting down its labs and relieving of responsibility 340 employees, roughly 40 percent of its total staff number.
According to Walgreens representatives, Theranos misled the company about its technology, as the two companies entered their agreement. Consequently, throughout the years of collaboration, Theranos failed to accomplish the goals the two companies established contractually, according to the Walgreens statements.
"Through its mishandling of our partnership and now this lawsuit, Walgreens has caused Theranos and its investors significant harm. We will respond vigorously to Walgreens' unfounded allegations, and will seek to hold Walgreens responsible for the damage it has caused to Theranos and its investors," the startup noted.
