If the judge accepts the plea, it will be the second time over the last six months that Boston Scientific has had to pay out for its subsidiary, which it acquired in 2006, well after the events in these cases. In December, Boston Scientific reached a $22 million settlement with the Department of Justice over alleged kickbacks Guidant paid to doctors in 2003 and 2004 to influence their participation in post-market surveys. Neither company admitted to any wrongdoing.

Boston Scientific did not respond to requests for comment by press time. But in November, when the plea over defibrillator reporting was first announced, Boston's CEO and president Ray Elliott, said: "Guidant and its employees acted in good faith and believed they complied with applicable laws and regulations. We elected to resolve this matter so we could put it behind us and devote our full energies and resources to developing our innovative technologies."

Bad time for Boston

The plea comes at a bad time for Boston. In March, in an unrelated case, the FDA rejected a request by the Natick, Mass.-based company to speed up a review of several of its defibrillators, which were recalled earlier in the month. According to the Wall Street Journal, Boston is losing as much as $5 million a day in sales during the recall.

In February, before the recall, the company had announced it would cut 1,300 jobs.

And ZimmermanReed, the firm representing the plaintiffs, is also involved in another lawsuit against Boston. The Minnesota-based lawyers are helping investors sue Boston for what they consider misleading claims about the TAXUS drug-eluting stent. The firm alleges some company executives withheld information to artificially boost stock prices. That case is set to be heard in a Boston district court in the coming weeks, according to Zimmerman.

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