Attorney General Kwame Raoul, with a bipartisan coalition of 50 attorneys general, announced two significant cooperation agreements and settlements, with Heritage Pharmaceuticals (Heritage) and Apotex Corp. (Apotex), totaling $49.1 million. The settlement agreements resolve allegations that both companies engaged in widespread, long-running conspiracies to artificially inflate and manipulate prices, reduce competition and unreasonably restrain access to numerous generic prescription drugs.
As part of the settlement agreements, both companies agree to cooperate in ongoing multistate litigation against 30 corporate defendants and 25 individual executives. Heritage and Apotex further agree to a series of internal reforms and compliance with antitrust laws to ensure fair competition.
“Too many Americans are forced to choose between paying for everyday necessities like rent or groceries and life-saving prescriptions. These settlements are a step in the right direction, toward holding drug companies accountable for outrageous profits at the expense of residents who rely on what are supposed to be more affordable generic drugs,” Raoul said. “I will continue to stand with my fellow attorneys general to ensure the pharmaceutical companies and executives are no longer able to continue the illegal and immoral tactics that fuel health care inequity around the country.”
Raoul is filing a $10 million settlement with Heritage in the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut. A $39.1 million settlement with Apotex will be finalized and filed in the U.S. District Court in the near future.
According to Attorney General Raoul, both settlements come after a coalition of nearly all states and territories filed three separate antitrust complaints, starting in 2016. The first complaint included Heritage and 17 corporate defendants, two individual defendants and 15 generic drugs. Two former executives from Heritage, Jeffery Glazer and Jason Malek, have since entered into settlement agreements and are cooperating.
Raoul and the coalition filed the second complaint in 2019 against Teva Pharmaceuticals and 19 of the nation’s largest generic drug manufacturers. The complaint names 16 individual senior executive defendants. The third complaint, to be tried first, focuses on 80 topical generic drugs that account for billions of dollars of sales in the United States, and names 26 corporate defendants and 10 individual defendants. Six additional pharmaceutical executives have entered into settlement agreements with the states and have been cooperating to support the states’ claims in all three cases.
The cases all stem from a series of investigations built on evidence from several cooperating witnesses at the core of different conspiracies, a massive document database comprised of over 20 million documents, and a phone records database containing millions of call detail records and contact information for over 600 sales-and-pricing individuals in the generics industry.
Each complaint addresses a different set of drugs and defendants and lays out an interconnected web of industry executives where these competitors met with each other during industry dinners, “girls’ nights out,” lunches, cocktail parties and golf outings, and communicated via frequent telephone calls, emails and text messages that sowed the seeds for their illegal agreements. Throughout the complaint, defendants use terms like “fair share,” “playing nice in the sandbox,” and “responsible competitor” to describe how they unlawfully discouraged competition, raised prices and enforced an ingrained culture of collusion.
You may be eligible for compensation if you purchased a generic prescription drug manufactured by Heritage Pharmaceuticals or Apotex Corp. between 2010 and 2018. To determine your eligibility, call 866-290-0182, email info@AGGenericDrugs.com, or visit www.AGGenericDrugs.com.
Joining Raoul in the settlement are the attorneys general of Alaska, Arizona, California Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Northern Mariana Islands, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, U.S. Virgin Islands, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
Original source can be found here.