Money may soon start trickling in from a nearly decade-long legal battle with pharmaceutical companies accused of conspiring to inflate generic drugs prices.
New Yorkers can now make claims on a $39 million settlement between Toronto-based pharmaceutical manufacturer Apotex and attorneys general in all 50 states over the company’s involvement in a price fixing scheme that has allegedly touched dozens of corporations and executives.
Apotex agreed to the payment in November as part of lawsuits filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James and other states accusing it of colluding with other companies to suppress competition and drive up prices on hundreds of medications for conditions like HIV and cancer. Because the case, which began with a lawsuit in 2016, is so far reaching, the settlement agreement required signatures from all 50 states. On Wednesday, the coalition filed the papers in federal court in Connecticut, clearing the way for residents to be compensated.
The sum is part of a larger $49 million settlement that included Apotex and another drug manufacturer, East Brunswick-based Heritage Pharmaceuticals, which agreed to pay $10 million and now goes by Avet Pharmaceuticals. Apotex and Heritage are among multiple corporations and pharmaceutical executives involved in ongoing lawsuits across the country over what the attorneys general have described as a web of illegal agreements enabled through a close knit community of executives.
The companies agreed to cooperate in litigation against 30 corporations and 25 pharmaceutical executives and implement internal measures to prevent anti-competitive behaviors.
