Drug price-fixing complaint unsealed

Michigan Attorney Dana Nessel joined Connecticut Attorney General William Tong and 41 other states on Tuesday in releasing the full, unredacted complaint against Teva Pharmaceuticals and 19 of the nation’s largest generic drug manufacturers after the court granted the states’ motion to unseal the complaint.

Among the evidence now public are emails between generic drug manufacturers coordinating their response to a Congressional inquiry, emails enforcing “fair share” and “playing nice in the sandbox” market allocation, “fluff pricing” strategy and other brazen coordination to artificially inflate prices, hinder competition and unreasonably restrain trade across the industry.

The lawsuit was first filed by Michigan, Connecticut and 42 other states on May 10 in U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut.

“This evidence demonstrates that these drug manufacturers knew exactly what they were doing, knew their actions were illegal, and deliberately and methodically conspired to fix prices and allocate market shares for drugs that our residents rely on every day,” said Nessel.  “We are working closely with nearly every state in the country to expand our investigation.  Today revealed compelling reinforcement of our concerns.”

The complaint is the second to be filed in an ongoing, expanding investigation that the Connecticut Office of the Attorney General has referred to as possibly the largest cartel case in the history of the United States. The first complaint, still pending in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, was filed in 2016 and now includes 18 corporate defendants, two individual defendants, and 15 generic drugs. Two former executives from Heritage Pharmaceuticals, Jeffery Glazer and Jason Malek, have entered into settlement agreements and are cooperating with the Attorneys General working group in that case.  (Michigan did not join that suit.)

In addition to Michigan and Connecticut, the following have joined the suit: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Puerto Rico joined the suit.