As Oregon families deal with skyrocketing costs for everyday necessities like prescription drugs, Attorney General Dan Rayfield is urging Oregonians to check if they’re owed money(Opens in a new tab/window) from pharmaceutical corporations who were caught secretly conspiring to drive up prices to pad their profits.
For years, Oregon and a coalition of 47 other states and territories worked to hold these corporations accountable and return money to people who paid overinflated prices to large generic drug manufacturers who were working together to inflate costs. This month, a federal court granted preliminary approval of a plan to undo the harm caused by these corporations.
“While families have been forced to decide between buying food and paying for medicine, we had giant pharmaceutical companies helping each other make enormous profits off the backs of struggling consumers,” said Attorney General Rayfield. “We took on this fight to hold those companies accountable, and Oregonians who paid the price deserve to get their money back.”
The coalition previously announced settlements with the manufacturers Glenmark, Lannett, Bausch, Apotex, Heritage, and Heritage’s parent company, Emcure, totaling approximately $96.5 million. The multistate coalition’s distribution plan aims to return millions of dollars from those settlement funds to those potentially harmed by the elevated prices of the generic drugs that were part of the settlements.
If you purchased a generic drug listed here between May 2009 and December 2019, you may be eligible for compensation. To determine your eligibility, call 1-866-290-0182 (Toll-Free), email info@AGGenericDrugs.com(Opens in a new tab/window) or visit www.AGGenericDrugs.com(Opens in a new tab/window).
Oregon is part of a coalition of nearly all states and territories engaged in a series of antitrust cases, starting first in 2016. The first complaint included Heritage and 17 other corporate defendants, two individual defendants, and 15 generic drugs. The second complaint was filed in 2019 against Teva Pharmaceuticals and 21 of the nation’s largest generic drug manufacturers. The complaint names 16 individual senior executive defendants.
The third complaint focuses on 80 topical generic drugs that account for billions of dollars of sales in the United States and names 26 corporate defendants and 10 individual defendants. The States filed a fourth complaint earlier this year, alleging that Novartis AG, Sandoz Group AG and Sandoz AG, are liable for Sandoz’s alleged conduct and for fraudulently transferring assets. Seven pharmaceutical executives have been cooperating to support the States’ claims in these cases.
The cases stem from a series of investigations built on evidence from several cooperating witnesses at the core of the different conspiracies, millions of documents, and a massive phone record database. Each complaint addresses a different set of drugs and defendants and lays out an interconnected web of competing industry executives who regularly met and communicated with each other, providing ample opportunity to form illegal agreements. The complaints note that defendants used terms like “fair share,” “playing nice in the sandbox,” and “responsible competitor” to unlawfully discourage competition, raise prices, and enforce a culture of collusion—all at the expense of patients.
Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Northern Mariana Islands, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, U.S. Virgin Islands, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming joined in today’s announcement.