Attorney General Chris Carr today announced that the State of Georgia has joined a coalition of 50 states and territories in reaching two significant cooperation agreements and settlements with Heritage Pharmaceuticals and Apotex. Totaling $49.1 million, the cooperation agreements and settlements resolve allegations that both companies engaged in widespread, long-running conspiracies to artificially inflate and manipulate prices, reduce competition, and unreasonably restrain trade with regards to numerous generic prescription drugs.

The Apotex settlement includes a $17.6 million restitution fund for consumers, and the Heritage settlement includes a $3.8 million restitution fund for consumers. Consumers who purchased a generic prescription drug manufactured by either Heritage or Apotex between 2010 and 2018 may be eligible for compensation. To determine your eligibility, call 1-866-290-0182 (Toll-Free), email [email protected], or visit www.AGGenericDrugs.com.

“Drug prices are a major concern for all Georgians, particularly our older adults, and consumers should know that the marketplace is fair and not fixed,” said Carr. “We won’t stand by and allow any company to artificially increase costs on the backs of hardworking Georgians desperately in need of treatment and care.”

As part of their settlement agreements, both companies have agreed to cooperate in the ongoing multistate litigation against 30 corporate defendants and 25 individual executives. Both companies have further agreed to a series of internal reforms to ensure fair competition and compliance with antitrust laws.

This coalition of states and territories has filed three antitrust complaints since 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 cooperated and entered into settlement agreements. The second complaint was filed in 2019 against 20 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 U.S. 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.  

These cases all stem from a series of investigations built on evidence from several cooperating witnesses, a document database of over 20 million files, 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 industry executives where these competitors 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 illegal agreements. Throughout the complaints, 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. 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 Carr in this settlement are the attorneys general of Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, 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, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, U.S. Virgin Islands, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming, and Puerto Rico.