Pfizer has agreed to a $50 million settlement to resolve a class-action antitrust case dating back to 2020. The lawsuit, filed in a federal court in Kansas, alleged that Pfizer, along with its partner Mylan, conspired with Teva to delay the introduction of a generic version of the EpiPen, a widely used allergy relief medication.
In this legal action, direct purchaser plaintiffs claimed that Mylan and Teva struck a deal where Mylan agreed to postpone the launch of its generic version of Teva’s branded drug, Nuvigil, in exchange for Teva delaying the introduction of its generic EpiPen. As a result, the direct purchasers asserted that they paid more for EpiPen than they would have if Teva’s generic had entered the market.
It’s worth noting that, in a prior partnership with Mylan, a Pfizer subsidiary was responsible for manufacturing EpiPen devices. However, Pfizer has since divested itself of this subsidiary.
This settlement comes on the heels of another agreement in 2021, in which Pfizer agreed to pay $345 million to settle an antitrust suit initiated in 2017 by indirect purchasers, including insurers, consumers, and pension funds, also in a US court in Kansas. The 2017 :multi-district suit, which consolidated various US cases, focused on alleged anticompetitive practices concerning EpiPen.
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Over a span of several years, Mylan significantly increased the price of the life-saving injectable medication, raising it from $100 to $600, which sparked public outrage.
In 2017, Mylan reached a settlement to pay $465 million to resolve claims by the US Justice Department that it had overcharged Medicaid for EpiPen by misclassifying the device as a “generic.”
Additionally, in March of the following year, Viatris, formed when Mylan merged with Pfizer’s generics unit Upjohn in 2020, paid $264 million to settle a class-action suit brought by consumers and third-party payers who alleged antitrust violations related to EpiPen.
