FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Media Contacts:
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 410-576-7009
50 States and Territories File Motion for Preliminary Approval for
$39.1 Million Settlement with Generic Drug Manufacturer Apotex
BALTIMORE, MD – Attorney General Anthony G. Brown is urging
consumers to check their eligibility for compensation for certain generic drug purchases as
Maryland joins 50 states and territories in seeking preliminary approval for a $39.1 million
settlement with generic drug manufacturer Apotex over conspiracy to inflate prices and limit
competition.
Attorney General Brown and the multistate coalition previously announced the settlement in principle with Apotex last fall along with a $10 million settlement with Heritage
Pharmaceuticals. At the time of that announcement, the settlement with Apotex was conditioned
on the signatures of all necessary states and territories. Those signatures have been obtained, and
the coalition is filing the settlement today in U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut.
“Today’s settlement is a hard-won victory for Marylanders who have been forced to pay inflated
prices for essential medications for far too long,” said Attorney General Brown. “We are
committed to holding companies like Apotex accountable for their unlawful business practices
and ensuring Maryland consumers receive the reimbursement they deserve for the harm caused
by this price-fixing conspiracy.”
If you purchased a generic prescription drug from this list between May 2009 and December 2019,
you may be eligible for compensation. To determine your eligibility, call 1-866-290-0182 (TollFree), email [email protected] or visit www.AGGenericDrugs.com.
The settlement agreements resolve allegations that both Apotex and Heritage engaged in
widespread, long-running conspiracies to artificially inflate and manipulate prices, reduce
competition, and unreasonably restrain trade with regard to numerous generic prescription drugs.
As part of the settlement agreements, both Apotex and Heritage have agreed to cooperate in the
ongoing multistate litigations against 30 corporate defendants and 25 individual executives. Both
companies have further agreed to a series of internal reforms to ensure fair competition and
compliance with antitrust laws.
Maryland is among a coalition of nearly all states and territories filing three antitrust complaints,
starting first in 2016. The first Complaint included Heritage and 17 other corporate defendants,
two individual defendants, and 15 generic drugs. Two former executives from Heritage
Pharmaceuticals, Jeffery Glazer and Jason Malek, have since entered into settlement agreements and are cooperating. The second Complaint was filed 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 the different conspiracies, a massive document database 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 complaints, 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. Among the records obtained by the States
is a two-volume notebook containing the contemporaneous notes of one of the States’
cooperators that memorialized his discussions during phone calls with competitors and internal
company meetings over a period of several years.
Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida,
Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, 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, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee,
Utah, U.S. Virgin Islands, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming,
and Puerto Rico joined in today’s announcement.
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