Chicago – Attorney General Kwame Raoul, with a bipartisan coalition of 50 attorneys general, today announced he filed for preliminary approval of a $39.1 million settlement with generic drug manufacturer Apotex over allegations of a conspiracy to inflate pharmaceutical prices and limit competition.
Raoul is also alerting Illinoisans that they may be eligible for compensation if they purchased a generic prescription drug listed here between May 2009 and December 2019. To determine eligibility, consumers can call toll-free at 1-866-290-0182, email info@AGGenericDrugs.com or visit www.AGGenericDrugs.com.
“This settlement builds on the work my office is doing to hold drug companies accountable for engaging in practices to maximize profits at the expense of the health and pocketbooks of Illinoisans. I encourage any Illinoisan who may have purchased a generic prescription from Apotex to check their eligibility for compensation that is included in this settlement,” Raoul said. “I will continue to stand with my fellow attorneys general to stop pharmaceutical companies and executives from being able to continue the unlawful and unfair tactics that fuel health care inequity around the country.”
Raoul and the coalition announced their settlement in principle with Apotex in October 2024, in addition to a $10 million settlement with Heritage Pharmaceuticals (Heritage). At the time, the settlement with Apotex was conditioned on receiving the signatures of all necessary states and territories. With those signatures obtained, Raoul and the coalition are filing for preliminary approval of the settlement in U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut.
Raoul and the coalition’s settlement agreements resolve allegations that both Apotex and Heritage engaged in widespread, long-running conspiracies to artificially inflate and manipulate prices, reduce competition and unreasonably restrain trade with regard to numerous generic prescription drugs. As part of the settlement agreements, both Apotex and Heritage have agreed to cooperate in the ongoing multistate litigation against 30 corporate defendants and 25 individual executives. Both companies have further agreed to injunctive relief to prevent future misconduct and to a series of internal reforms to ensure fair competition and compliance with antitrust laws.
According to Attorney General Raoul, both settlements come after a coalition of nearly all states and territories filed three separate antitrust complaints, starting in 2016. The first complaint included Heritage and 17 corporate defendants, two individual defendants and 15 generic drugs. Two former executives from Heritage, Jeffery Glazer and Jason Malek, have since entered into settlement agreements and are cooperating.
Raoul and the coalition filed the second complaint in 2019 against Teva Pharmaceuticals and 19 of the nation’s largest generic drug manufacturers. The complaint names 16 individual senior executives as 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. Six additional pharmaceutical executives have entered into settlement agreements with the states and have been cooperating to support the states’ claims in all three cases.
The cases stem from a series of investigations built on evidence from several cooperating witnesses at the core of different conspiracies, a massive document database comprised 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 who 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 laid the foundation for their illegal agreements. Throughout the complaint, 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.
Joining Raoul in the settlement are the attorneys general of Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, 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, Utah, U.S. Virgin Islands, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
