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Alere drags Abbott to court over $5.8 billion deal

(Reuters) - Diagnostic-testing company Alere Inc, which has agreed to be bought by Abbott Laboratories, said on Friday it filed a lawsuit, seeking to compel Abbott to obtain all antitrust approvals required to complete the deal.

Abbott has been reluctant to push through the deal and requested to call it off in April, raising concerns about the accuracy of covenants, warranties and various representations made by Alere in the merger agreement.

Alere has received two U.S. Department of Justice subpoenas this year as part of two separate government investigations into its sales practices, and patient-billing records related to Medicare, Medicaid and Tricare.

The company said on Friday it expects the redacted version of the complaint, filed in a Delaware chancery court against Abbott on Thursday, to be publicly available next week.

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Alere's lawsuit was "without merit," an Abbott spokeswoman said.

"Abbott is compliant with its obligations under the merger agreement and continues to work towards regulatory approvals, despite Alere's nearly six-month delay in filing its 2015 10-K (annual report)."

Alere shares were down 2.6 percent at $39.64. The stock had fallen about 25 percent since the Abbott deal was announced through Thursday's close.

Abbott, whose shares were down 0.3 percent at $42.70, agreed to buy St Jude Medical Inc for about $25 billion in April.

(Reporting by Ankur Banerjee, Richa Naidu and Subrat Patnaik in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty and Shounak Dasgupta)