Utah joins other states in drug price fixing lawsuit

Utah has joined a number of other states in a third antitrust investigation lawsuit into price-fixing by generic drug manufacturers. Attorney General Sean D. Reyes reported that the complaint says 26 companies conspired to artificially inflate and manipulate prices for at least 80 generic topical dermatological drugs, reduce competition and unreasonably restrain trade for generic drugs sold across the United States.

The topical drugs at the center of the complaint include creams, gels, lotions, ointments, shampoos and solutions used to treat a variety of skin conditions, pain and allergies.

The lawsuit names 26 corporate defendants and 10 individual defendants, mostly drug company executive, and seeks damages, civil penalties and actions by the court to restore competition to the generic drug market. It was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut.

“Generic drugs account for the majority of prescriptions that are filled in Utah and nationwide, so it is of paramount importance that generic drugs remain affordable as Congress intended when the Hatch-Waxman Act was passed over 30 years ago,” said Reyes. “Our investigation shows these companies are working together — instead of competing against each other — in order to fix higher-than-market-value prices. That’s unconscionable behavior and bad actors will be held accountable.”

The complaint stems from an ongoing investigation built on evidence from several cooperating witnesses at the core of the conspiracy, 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. Among the records obtained by the states is a two-volume notebook containing the contemporaneous notes of one of the states’ cooperating informants that memorialized his discussions during phone calls with competitors and internal company meetings over a period of several years, Reyes said.