Drummond announces settlements, cooperation agreements in multistate litigation against generic drug manufacturers
OKLAHOMA CITY (Oct. 31, 2024) – Attorney General Gentner Drummond today announced two significant cooperation agreements and $49.1 million in settlements with Heritage Pharmaceuticals and Apotex to resolve allegations that both companies engaged in widespread, long-running conspiracies to artificially inflate prices on generic prescription drugs.
Oklahomans who purchased generic prescription drugs between Jan. 1, 2010, and Dec. 31, 2018, could be eligible for compensation.
As part of their settlement agreements, both companies have agreed to cooperate in ongoing multistate litigations against 30 corporate defendants and 25 individual executives. The companies also agreed to internal reforms to ensure fair competition and compliance with antitrust laws. A motion for preliminary approval of the $10 million settlement with Heritage will be filed today in the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut in Hartford. A settlement with Apotex for $39.1 million is contingent upon obtaining signatures from all necessary states and territories and will be finalized and filed in U.S. District Court in the near future.
“This is a positive development in our fight to hold accountable drug manufacturers for artificially manipulating prices, reducing competition and unreasonably restraining trade for numerous generic prescription drugs,” Drummond said. “I hope Oklahomans who are eligible will seek the compensation to which they are entitled.”
The settlements come as the coalition of nearly all states and territories prepare for the first trial, which will be held in Hartford, Conn. The coalition has filed three antitrust complaints. The first, filed in 2016, included Heritage Pharmaceuticals and 17 other 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.
The second complaint was filed in 2019 against Teva Pharmaceuticals and 19 of the nation’s largest generic drug manufacturers. It names 16 individual senior executive defendants. The third complaint, which will be tried first, focuses on 80 topical generic drugs accounting for billions of dollars of U.S. sales and names 26 corporate defendants and 10 individual defendants. Six additional pharmaceutical executives have entered into settlement agreements with the states and are cooperating to support the states’ claims in all three cases.
The cases all stem from a series of investigations that are built on evidence from several cooperating witnesses at the core of the different conspiracies, a massive document database of more than 20 million documents and a phone records database containing millions of call detail records. Each complaint addresses a different set of drugs and defendants and lays out an interconnected web of industry executives where these competitors met during industry dinners, "girls nights out," lunches, cocktail parties or 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.
To determine compensation eligibility, visit www.aggenericdrugs.com, call toll free 1-866-290-0182 or email info@aggenericdrugs.com.
