Attorney General Josh Stein Announces New Steps to Help Lower Prescription Drug Prices

For Immediate Release:
Thursday, October 31, 2024

Contact: Nazneen Ahmed
919-716-0060

North Carolinians who bought certain generic prescription drugs in the United States between January 1, 2010, and December 31, 2018, could be eligible for money

(RALEIGH) Attorney General Josh Stein today announced two significant settlement agreements with Heritage Pharmaceuticals and Apotex totaling $49.1 million to resolve allegations that both companies artificially inflated and manipulated prices of generic prescription drugs. If you purchased a generic prescription drug from between 2010 and 2018, you may be eligible for compensation. To determine your eligibility, call 1-866-290-0182 (Toll-Free), email [email protected], or visit www.AGGenericDrugs.com.

"North Carolinians should be able to turn to generic drugs as an affordable way to get the medications they need to get and stay well," said Attorney General Josh Stein. "I'm pleased that we've won back some money for people who overpaid for these prescriptions. Please take a moment to find out if you're eligible for compensation. My office will continue to hold accountable companies that fix drug prices at the expense of people's care."

As part of their settlement agreements, both companies have agreed to cooperate in the ongoing multistate litigations and have also agreed to a series of 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 United States 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 the U.S. District Court in the near future.

Today's settlements are the result of three multistate lawsuits Attorney General Stein filed against pharmaceutical companies and executives unlawfully raising generic drug prices. In 2020, Attorney General Stein filed a lawsuit against 26 generic drug manufacturers and 10 senior drug company executives alleging a widespread conspiracy to artificially inflate and manipulate prices, reduce competition, and unreasonably restrain trade for 80 topical generic drugs. In 2019, Attorney General Stein filed an antitrust lawsuit against 20 generic drug manufacturers and 15 senior executives. In 2017, Attorney General Stein joined a federal generic drug antitrust lawsuit alleging illegal conspiracies to fix prices on 15 drugs that has expanded to include 18 generic drug manufacturers.

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 records and contact information for more than 600 sales and pricing people 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. In these communications, 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.

Attorney General Stein is joined in these settlements by the Attorneys General of 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 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.

###