Price-fixing case against 20 drugmakers reinstated by California Supreme Court

In the USA, the California Supreme Court on Tuesday reinstated a potentially multi-million-dollar price-fixing law suit against 20 large pharmaceutical companies, reported the Bay City News Service. In a ruling issued in San Francisco, the court unanimously overturned a trial judge's dismissal of the law suit, which was filed in 2004 by 17 California pharmacies.

The law suit claims the drug companies violated state antitrust law by conspiring to set artificially high prices for their brand-name pharmaceuticals in the USA, allegedly at levels of 50% to 400% more than for the same drugs sold in other countries. It also accuses the companies of conspiring to prevent their lower-priced drugs sold in other countries, such as Canada, from being re-imported into the USA.

The defendants in the case are Abbott Laboratories, AstraZeneca, Novartis, Allergan, Boehringer Ingelheim, Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, Janssen Pharmaceutical, Ortho McNeil Pharmaceutical, Ortho Biotech, GlaxoSmithKline; Pfizer, Roche, Aventis Pharmaceuticals, Amgen, Purdue Pharma, Merck & Co, Bristol-Myers-Squibb, Wyeth, Johnson & Johnson Health Care Systems and the trade association Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA).