Heritage Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

PHILADELPHIA, March 29, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- NastLaw LLC announces: If you purchased certain named generic pharmaceutical drugs directly from certain pharmaceutical manufacturers from May 1, 2009 through December 31, 2019 , your rights may be affected by proposed class action settlements. A federal court authorized this notice. This is not a solicitation from a lawyer. What is the lawsuit about? Three proposed settlements have been reached in a class action lawsuit ("the Lawsuit"), which alleges that Breckenridge Corp., Apotex Corp., and Heritage Pharmaceuticals Inc., (collectively "Settling Defendants") and other generic drug manufacturers violated the federal antitrust laws by conspiring to fix, maintain, and stabilize prices, rig bids, and engage in market and customer allocations of certain generic drugs (the "Named Generic Drugs"), causing direct purchasers of the Named Generic Drugs to pay more than they should have. The Settling Defendants, who are defined to also include Emcure Pharmaceutical Ltd., the owner of Heritage Pharmaceuticals Inc and Satish Mehta, one of its owners, deny liability as alleged in the Lawsuit. The Court has not decided who is right. The proposed Settlements do not resolve any of the claims of the Settlement Class against the remaining Defendants. The Lawsuit against the remaining Defendants is ongoing. Who is included? The Court has certified three Settlement Classes, one Settlement Class for each proposed Settlement: (1) the Breckenridge Settlement Class, (2) the Apotex Settlement Class, and (3) the Heritage Settlement Class. Each Settlement Class includes all persons or entities, and their successors and assigns, that directly purchased one or more of the Named Generic Drugs from one or more Current or Former Defendants in the United States and its territories and possessions, at any time during the period from May 1, 2009 through December 31, 2019. Excluded from the Settlement Classes are Current and Former Defendants and their present and former officers, directors, management, employees, subsidiaries, or affiliates, judicial officers and their personnel, and all governmental entities. The Settlement Agreements listing the Named Generic Drugs and Current and Former Defendants are available on the settlement website: GenericDrugsDirectPurchaserSettlement.com. The Settlement Agreements also are on public file with the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, 601 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA 19106 in the case In re: Generic Pharmaceuticals Pricing Antitrust Litigation, Case No. 2:16-MD-02724. What do the settlements provide? The proposed Settlements provide for the following payments: (1) a $5,000,000.00 payment by the Settling Defendant Breckenridge Corp.; (2) a $30,000,000.00 payment from Settling Defendant Apotex Corp.; and (3) a $10,000,000.00 payment from Settling Defendants Heritage Pharmaceuticals Inc., Emcure Pharmaceuticals Ltd., and Satish Mehta. These payments will comprise the total $45,000,000.00 "Settlement Fund." The Settlement Fund may be reduced by up to $4,245,000.00 or increased to a maximum of $55,735,294.10 under certain circumstances as explained in the Settlement Agreements. In addition, the Direct Purchaser Plaintiff ("DPP") attorneys who have worked on the Lawsuit for the Settlement Classes will seek Court approval to pay expenses, and service awards for the class representatives (or named plaintiffs) out of the Settlement Fund. DPP attorneys will also request that the Court set aside up to one third of the Settlement Fund plus a proportionate amount of interest for a future request for attorneys' fees. Any motion for expenses and service awards or for a set aside for a future request for attorneys' fees will be posted on the settlement website GenericDrugsDirectPurchaserSettlement.com. no later than May 13, 2024. The calculations of the dollar amount that each Settlement Class Member will be paid from the Settlement Fund are set forth in the Plan of Allocation, which also is available on GenericDrugsDirectPurchaserSettlement.com. What are your options? If you are a Settlement Class Member and you do nothing, you will remain in the Settlement Classes and are eligible to participate in the Settlements as described in this notice, if the Settlements are approved. However, you will need to complete, sign, and return the claim forms (once they are sent to you) in order to obtain a payment. We do not know when the claim forms will be mailed. You should check GenericDrugsDirectPurchaserSettlement.com for information regarding timing. If you did not receive a Notice in the mail, and you think you are a potential Settlement Class Member, please identify yourself or your company by letter to the following address: In re: Generic Pharmaceuticals Pricing Antitrust Litigation – Direct Purchasers, c/o A.B. Data, Ltd., P.O. Box 173095, Milwaukee, WI 53217. Or send an email to [email protected], or call 877-315-0583. You may be required to submit proof of a qualifying direct purchase to establish that you are a member of the Settlement Classes. Claimants may also be required to submit purchase data as part of the claims process. As a Settlement Class Member, unless you opt out of the Settlements, you will be bound by all orders and judgments of the Court. In addition, if you are a Settlement Class Member you may request exclusion from (or opt out of) one or more of the Settlements and may object to the Settlements if you do not opt out. Instructions for opting-out or objecting can be found in the publicly available case file and website, as described above. You must mail your request to opt out or your objection by June 27, 2024. The Court will hold a Fairness Hearing on September 23rd, 2024, to decide whether to approve the Settlements and any requests for expenses and service awards for the class representatives and for a set-aside for a future request for attorneys' fees. The Court will also consider a Plan of Allocation for distributing the Settlement Fund to Settlement Class Members. If there are objections, the Court will consider them at the hearing. You do not need to attend the hearing. If you wish to appear at the hearing, you must file a "Notice of Intention to Appear" with the Court and you may hire your own attorney to appear in Court for you at your own expense. For more information : Go to the website: GenericDrugsDirectPurchaserSettlement.com or call 877-315-0583 for more information on the settlement, the lawsuit, and your potential rights and options related to the settlement. The website includes, for example, a list of the generic drugs that you would have had to purchase and a list of the generic manufacturers that you would have had to purchase directly from in order to be eligible for a payment. SOURCE NastLaw LLC

Each of the settlement amounts has the potential to increase or decrease, depending on the outcome of the legal proceedings. Over the years, myriad generic drugmakers have had to ante up fines and settlement fees for allegedly colluding on the prices of copycat drugs. Now, Apotex and two of its generics peers have agreed to settle with direct purchasers of their drugs in a price-fixing case that stretches all the way back to 2017. Apotex plans to settle with the group of direct purchaser plaintiffs for $30 million, while Heritage Pharmaceuticals and Breckenridge Pharmaceutical will hand over $10 million and $5 million, respectively, according to a trio of motions filed Tuesday in the multidistrict litigation in Pennsylvania federal court. Each of the settlement amounts has the potential to increase or decrease, depending on the outcome of the legal proceedings. Apotex, for instance, could have its settlement fund reduced by up to $3.6 million if certain parties opt out of the deal. The case stretches back to 2017, when direct purchasers fired off litigation claiming that Apotex and its peers conspired with other, non-settling drugmakers to artificially inflate and maintain prices for certain generic drugs. The plaintiffs said this activity resulted in “supracompetitive prices” that forced them to overpay for medications. The settlement negotiations with Apotex, Heritage and Breckenridge were “hard-fought, at arm’s length, and spanned many months,” the plaintiffs said in the new motions. As for Toronto-based Apotex, this is hardly the company’s first brush with price-fixing controversy. Back in early 2020, for instance, the company agreed to pay a $24.1 million criminal penalty in the culmination of a yearslong generics price-fixing probe by the U.S. Department of Justice. Under the deal, the company also admitted to its behavior and entered a deferred prosecution agreement. That case centered on pricing levels for pravastatin, a generic cholesterol medication, between May 2013 and December 2015. Apotex admitted to working with other generic companies to artificially inflate the drug’s price, U.S. authorities said at the time. The following year, Apotex agreed to shell out an additional $49 million settlement payment related to pravastatin.

On Monday, Teva Pharmaceuticals and Glenmark Pharmaceuticals became the sixth and seventh drugmakers to resolve criminal charges as a result of the Department of Justice’s yearslong investigation into generic drug price fixing. The settlement agreement requires both companies to pay hefty fines as well as divest their drug lines for pravastatin, a widely used statin that lowers cholesterol. In 2019, the DOJ showed that it was serious about cracking down on generic drug price fixing by issuing two multi-million dollar fines to Heritage Pharmaceuticals and Rising Pharmaceuticals. The legal case at the center of Monday’s settlement dates back to 2020, when the DOJ indicted Teva over alleged price fixing conspiracies with four other generic drugmakers — Glenmark, Sandoz, Apotex and Taro Pharmaceuticals. The indictment charged the pharma companies with raising prices, rigging bids and allocating customers for generic drugs. These medications included pravastatin, as well as generic drugs for autoimmune diseases, pain, cancer and cystic fibrosis. In 2020, Taro, Sandoz and Apotex admitted their roles in the alleged schemes and paid fines respectively totaling $205.7 million, $195 million and $24.1 million. With Monday’s settlement, Teva and Glenmark have also admitted to their roles in running a price fixing scheme and agreed to pay criminal penalties. The DOJ ordered Teva to pay a $225 million penalty, which the department said is the largest fine to date for “a domestic antitrust cartel.” As for Glenmark, the DOJ issued the firm a $30 million fine. The settlement agreement also requires both Teva and Glenmark to divest their respective drug lines for pravastatin, which was at the center of the companies’ alleged price fixing scheme. In addition to the $225 million penalty, the DOJ ordered Teva to donate $50 million worth of drugs to humanitarian organizations. Those drugs are antifungal medication clotrimazole and antibiotic drug tobramycin The prices of both were affected by the conspiracy, the DOJ said. If either company violates the terms of their settlement agreement, they will face prosecution. If convicted, they would likely get banned from federal healthcare programs like Medicare and Medicaid, according to the DOJ’s statement. “When a firm is criminally convicted, it is barred from participating in U.S. federal healthcare programs. Teva Pharmaceuticals is one of the largest generic pharmaceutical firms in the world, so barring it from much of the healthcare industry would be dangerous. The right response is to shrink the firm and force it to disgorge illicit profits, which is what the antitrust division did,” Matt Stoller, director of research at the antitrust advocacy group American Economic Liberties Project, said in a statement. In a press release issued Monday, Teva said it “fosters a culture of compliance” and “has robust and consistent compliance controls in place” to prevent price fixing schemes from recurring in the future. Glenmark did not respond to MedCity News’ request for comment. In 2019, Heritage agreed to pay more than $7 million to settle its price fixing case, and Rising was issued a penalty totaling more than $3 million. Collectively, seven drugmakers have agreed to pay nearly $700 million as a result of the DOJ’s crackdown on generic drug price fixing.