CooperVision Will Pay $3M to Settle Price-Fixing Class Action

Contact lens company CooperVision Inc. agrees to pay $3 million to settle a class action lawsuit alleging that they conspired with competitors to fix prices of disposable lenses.

Since early 2015, CooperVision has been fighting a multidistrict litigation in Florida alleging that the contact lens giant conspired with competitors Alcon Laboratories, Johnson & Johnson Vision Care Inc., Bausch & Lomb Inc. to require their resellers to sell disposable contact lenses at no less than an established minimum price, and this week, the company agreed to pay $3 million to settle the dispute.

Together, the four companies control approximately 97 percent of the disposable contact lens market. The CooperVision price-fixing multidistrict litigation claims that this fact, combined with the alleged price-fixing, gave the four companies considerable power to eliminate competition in the market.

The Sherman Act and various state laws aimed at eliminating unfair competition prohibit price-fixing, and the class action lawsuit claims that the companies’ practice of establishing “Unilateral Pricing Policies” (UPP) violated these laws. Throughout the legal process, CooperVision maintained that “its UPP was entered into without collusion with other market participants and done within the bounds of established law.”

CooperVision maintains that all of the companies involved were “forced” to accept the pricing policies, so no agreement on the terms had been negotiated between the companies.

As evidence for their case, the contact lens price-fixing multidistrict litigation requested that CooperVision produce records of their communications between sales representatives and eye care providers. In these documents, the Unilateral Pricing Policies were often referred to as “call notes.” The consumers also took depositions from representatives of CooperVision on their experience with the Unilateral Pricing Policies or “call notes.”

According to court documents, CooperVision’s agreed settlement of $3 million would cover approximately 38 percent of the maximum amount that putative Class Members could have received had the case gone to trial. So, CooperVision determined that it was less financially damaging to settle than to take the case to trial.

Compensation for affected consumers will include financial compensation to cover the cost of litigation, as well as relief for financial injury incurred from buying contact lenses subject to price-fixing.

The CooperVision class action claims that price-fixing began when optometrists and opthalmologists raised concerns about extreme discounts offered on disposable contact lenses through Walmart, Costco Wholesale Corp., 1-800-Contacts, and LensDiscounters.com. Allegedly, the price-fixing was started as a way to maintain sufficiently high profit margins for these companies.

Under the terms of the contact lens class action settlement, Class Members would include “[A]ll persons and entities residing in the United States who made retail purchases of disposable contact lenses manufactured by Alcon Laboratories, Inc., Johnson & Johnson Vision Care, Inc., Bausch & Lomb, Inc., or CVI (or distributed by ABB Concise Optical Group) during the Settlement Class Period for their own use and not for resale, which were sold at any time subject to a Unilateral Pricing Policy.”

The CooperVision multidistrict litigation plaintiffs are still waiting to have their proposed Class approved but it is expected to include hundreds of thousands of consumers.

Top Class Actions will post updates to this class action settlement as they become available. For the latest updates, keep checking TopClassActions.com or sign up for our free newsletter. You can also receive notifications when this article is updated by using your free Top Class Actions account and clicking the “Follow Article” button at the top of the post.

The consumers are represented by Joseph P. Guglielmo of Scott & Scott LLP.

The CooperVision Contact Price-Fixing Class Action Lawsuit is In re: Disposable Contact Lens Antitrust Litigation, Case No. 3:15-md-02626, in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida.

UPDATE: On Sept. 17, 2019, Bausch & Lomb agreed to pay $10 million to consumers who allege that the contact lens company conspired with others to raise prices of soft, disposable lenses.

UPDATE 2: December 2019, the contact lens price-fixing class action settlement is now open. Click here to file a claim.