Wisconsin Department of Justice Urges Consumers to Claim Compensation for Inflated Generic Drug Prices
Wisconsin DOJ, along with 47 other states and territories, is announcing preliminary approval of their plan to distribute funds to consumers following multiple settlements with drug manufacturers accused of conspiring to inflate prices of generic drugs.
MADISON, Wis. — The Wisconsin Department of Justice (DOJ) is urging consumers to check their eligibility for compensation for certain generic drug purchases and to submit a claim for compensation here. This month, the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut granted preliminary approval of a plan, filed by Wisconsin and a coalition of 47 other states and territories, to distribute settlement funds paid by generic drug manufacturers in exchange for settlement of claims that those companies illegally conspired to raise the prices of generic drugs.
“Wisconsinites shouldn’t have to pay more for prescription drugs because prices were improperly manipulated,” said AG Kaul. “I encourage folks to find out if they’re eligible for compensation from these settlements with generic drug companies and, if they are eligible, to submit a claim.”
The coalition previously announced settlements with the manufacturers Glenmark, Lannett, Bausch, Apotex, Heritage, and Heritage’s parent company, Emcure, totaling more than $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 are the subjects of those 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 or visit the AG Generic Drugs Settlement Website.
Wisconsin has joined a series of antitrust cases relating to prescription drug prices, starting in 2016. The first complaint included Heritage and 17 other corporate defendants, two individual defendants, and 15 generic drugs. Two former executives from Heritage Pharmaceuticals, Jeffery Glazer and Jason Malek, have since entered into settlement agreements and are cooperating. 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, to be tried first, 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. Seven additional pharmaceutical executives have been cooperating.
The cases all stem from a series of investigations built on evidence from several cooperating witnesses at the core of the different alleged conspiracies, 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. Each complaint addresses a different set of drugs and defendants, and lays out an interconnected web of competing industry executives that 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 alleged illegal agreements. Throughout the complaints, the allegations refer to the defendants’ use of terms like “fair share,” “playing nice in the sandbox,” and “responsible competitor” to describe how they allegedly 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.
Joining Wisconsin DOJ in this announcement are the attorneys general of 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, and Wyoming.
NOTE: This press release was submitted to Urban Milwaukee and was not written by an Urban Milwaukee writer. While it is believed to be reliable, Urban Milwaukee does not guarantee its accuracy or completeness.
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