Photo: Ford, Brad
Attorney General Rayfield is urging consumers to check their eligibility for compensation for certain generic drug purchases as Oregon 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.
“We’re sending a clear message to these drug companies: you can’t rip off people and get away with it,” Rayfield said. “By colluding to jack up prices, they chose greed over the health of consumers. We’re here to make sure these companies pay, and that everyday people aren’t left footing the bill for these unfair practices.”
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 in Hartford.
If you purchased a generic prescription drug listed here between May 2009 and December 2019, you may be eligible for compensation. To determine your eligibility, call 1-866-290-0182 (Toll-Free), email info@AGGenericDrugs.com or visit www.AGGenericDrugs.com.
Oregon is among a bipartisan coalition of states and territories that filed a series of three antitrust complaints starting in 2016, involving more than 100 generic prescription drugs. The Apotex settlement agreement resolves allegations that Apotex, Heritage Pharmaceuticals, and other generic drug manufacturers engaged in widespread, long-running conspiracies to artificially inflate and manipulate prices for numerous generic prescription drugs, reduce competition, and unreasonably restrain trade. As part of the settlement agreements, both Apotex and Heritage have agreed to cooperate in ongoing multistate litigation 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.
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, golf outings and communicated via frequent telephone calls, emails and text messages that sowed the seeds for their illegal agreements.
Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, 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, 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.
Source: Oregon Attorney General