Allergan, Alcon Eye Drop Lawsuit Wins Class Certification

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The lawsuit against eye drop medication manufacturers Allergan, Alcon, and Bausch & Lomb, Pfizer, Merck, and Prasco won class certification on July 25, and can proceed.

The prescription eye drop class action lawsuit alleges that the various pharmaceutical companies violated Illinois and Missouri consumer protection laws through their deceptive scheme to make higher profits off prescription eye drops, by designing the bottles to make larger drops than necessary.

According to the complaint, each defendant is “separately engaged in an unfair and unscrupulous scheme…to increase its profits by selling prescription eye drops in a form that compels consumers to buy and spend money for expensive medication that inherently goes to waste.”

Lead plaintiffs Charlene Eike, Shirley Fisher, Jordan Pitler, and Alan Raymond assert that they each have used two or more different eye drop medications for at least 10 years, and the defendants’ defective eye drop dispensers have cost them thousands of dollars.

The plaintiffs cite an eye doctor as an expert witness who says that large eye drops “provide more medication than necessary… [i]ndeed, the literature indicates that larger drops are no more effective” than smaller drops.

The eye medication manufacturer defendants challenged that the lead plaintiffs’ could not represent the claims of all potential Class Members, because the lead plaintiffs “used only 14 of the 33 glaucoma medications at issue.”

The plaintiffs countered by stating that “they were all exposed to the same course of conduct by Defendants: selling prescription eye medication in a bottle that delivers unnecessarily large eye drops.”

The defendants further argued that the Class claims involved individual questions for each potential plaintiff, and that consumers could have avoided the alleged injury by using different medications.

However, U.S. District Court Judge Staci M. Yandle disagreed.

In her order, Judge Yandle determined that “there are differences between Plaintiffs, such as Plaintiffs’ ages and varying treatment plans, but the core issue is whether the dispensers release unnecessarily large eye drops.”

After reviewing the evidence and the arguments of both parties, Judge Yandle ruled that “because common issues of law and fact predominate and trying the claims of the putative class members separately would result in a substantial repetition and wasted resources, proceeding as a class action is the superior form of adjudication for this case.”

Judge Yandle certified nine separate Classes of residents in Illinois or Missouri who purchased prescription eye drops from one of the named manufacturers.

The Class is represented by Richard S. Cornfeld of the Law Office of Richard S. Cornfeld; John G. Simon and Kevin M. Carnie Jr. of The Simon Law Firm, PC; Mark C. Goldenberg; Thomas P. Rosenfeld, and Kevin P. Green of Goldenberg Heller & Antognoli, PC; and Brian Wolfman.

The Prescription Eye Drop Class Action Lawsuit is Charlene Eike, et al. v. Allergan Inc., et al., Case No. 3:12-cv-01141, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois, East St. Louis.