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October 31, 2017

CT, 45 states, seek to expand generic drug antitrust probe

PHOTO | Contributed State Attorney General George Jepsen.

State Attorney General George Jepsen led 45 other attorneys general Tuesday in asking the federal court to expand an antitrust lawsuit against generic drug companies by adding 12 pharmaceutical companies, two executives and 13 drugs to the case.

Jepsen and his colleagues across the U.S. are seeking to increase the number of defendants from six to 18 and the drugs involved from two to 15.

In the expanded complaint, originally filed in 2014 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the states allege that the companies named in the suit have a number of illegal agreements to fix prices and share customers for a number of generic drugs.

The states also allege that these conspiracies were part of a much broader industry code of conduct that enabled the manufacturers to divvy up the market for specific generic drugs.

The original defendants include Heritage Pharmaceuticals, Inc.; Aurobindo Pharma USA, Inc.; Citron Pharma, LLC; Mayne Pharma (USA), Inc.; Mylan Pharmaceuticals, Inc.; and Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Inc. The original drugs at issue included doxycycline hyclate delayed release, an antibiotic, and glyburide, an oral diabetes medication.

The expanded list of defendants includes Actavis Holdco U.S., Inc.; Actavis Pharma, Inc.; Ascend Laboratories, LLC; Apotex Corp.; Dr. Reddy's Laboratories, Inc.; Emcure Pharmaceuticals, Ltd.; Glenmark Pharmaceuticals, Inc.; Lannett Company, Inc.; Par Pharmaceutical Companies, Inc.; Sandoz, Inc.; Sun Pharmaceutical Industries,Inc.; and Zydus Pharmacuticuals (USA), Inc.

The expanded complaint also names two individual defendants: Rajiv Malik, president and executive director of Mylan N.V., which is the parent company of Mylan Pharmaceuticals, Inc.; and Satish Mehta, the chief executive officer and managing director of Emcure Pharmaceuticals, Ltd., which is the parent company of Heritage Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

“We allege in this complaint that the defendant companies' collusion was so pervasive that it essentially eliminated competition from the market for ... 15 drugs in its entirety,” Jepsen said.

The generic drug industry had an estimated $74.5 billion in sales in 2015 in the U.S. and accounted for 88 percent of all prescriptions written in the U.S., Jepsen said.

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