Judge Daniel D Crabtree of the US District Court for the District of Kansas has granted Pfizer approval of a $50 million settlement to resolve litigation accusing the pharmaceutical company of conspiring to inflate the price of EpiPen brand epinephrine auto-injectors.
In his July 8 order, Crabtree said:
This immediate recovery is more valuable than a ‘mere possibility’ that Class Members might achieve a more favorable outcome ‘after protracted and expensive litigation’ that may well last ‘many years in the future.’
The litigation followed the price hike of the EpiPen from $100 in 2008 to over $600 in 2016, leading to lawsuits by wholesalers and consumers alleging that Pfizer (the device manufacturer) and Mylan (now a unit of Viatris, the device marketer) engaged in anti-competitive practices.
The plaintiffs claimed the companies engaged in monopolistic behavior to ensure their market dominance by excluding other potential entrants. They alleged the companies colluded to pay millions to Teva Pharmaceuticals to delay the release of their generic version of EpiPen.
The settlement also awarded $16.7 million in attorneys’ fees to class counsel.
The big winners in this settlement are Pfizer, who potentially made hundreds of millions from the scheme, and the attorneys engaged in the litigation.
In our opinion, the $50 million settlement represents a tiny fraction of the compensation consumers were due after the companies fleeced them by raising the price of this life-saving medication by 500% and allegedly preventing others from entering the market.
We wonder how many people died or were seriously injured over the period because they couldn’t afford epinephrine auto-injectors when anaphylaxis struck.
