Painkiller Pay-For-Play Class Action Lawsuit Hits Endo

Alleged collusion between two pharmaceutical companies led to insurers and patients paying more for a prescription medication according to a recently filed painkiller pay-for-play class action lawsuit.

Pennsylvania Employees Benefit Trust Fund reportedly provides health insurance benefits to more than 250,000 people, chiefly former state workers and their families. The association alleges that an agreement between Endo and generic drug maker Impax kept less expensive versions of the opiate Opana ER off the market.

The chemical name for the painkiller is oxymorphone hydrochloride, and class action attorneys for the trust fund wrote that it had reportedly been used in the United States for decades. However, Endo reportedly worked with another company to come up with an extended-release formulation and gained three years of exclusivity after it submitted clinical trials to the FDA.

At the end of that period, the generic drug maker that was the first to file an abbreviated new drug application (ANDA) would have 180 days to sell their competing painkiller with no other competition. Those roughly six months do not have to come immediately, and the class action lawsuit alleges that more than $100 million changed hands in order to keep Impax’s generic off the market.

The key component of the alleged settlement was “a future cash payment from Endo to Impax based on sales of Opana ER in the quarter immediately prior to the delayed Impax launch date established in the Exclusion Payment Agreement (which cash payment in the amount of $102,049,000 was received by Impax in April 2013)[.]” As a result, no generic alternative was available “until January 2013, or two and a half years after Impax received final approval[.]”

Further allegations note that Endo again came up with a separate formulation, this time called Opana ER CRF, which reportedly is packaged in such a manner so that it is harder to crush and then ingest by people with opioid dependency issues. Since pharmacists cannot substitute the older non-crushproof version, the class action lawsuit alleges that Endo still maintains exclusivity.

As a result, PEBTF seeks to represent a class of all those who paid for or reimbursed the price of the Opana ER tablets for themselves or any other parties “at any time during the period from June 14, 2010 until the anticompetitive effects of Defendants’ conduct cease.”

The plaintiffs are represented by class action attorneys from Wexler Wallace LLP and Spector Roseman Kodroff & Willis PC.

The Painkiller Pay-For-Play Class Action Lawsuit is Pennsylvania Employees Benefit Trust Fund v. Endo Health Solutions Inc., et al., Case No. 14-cv-06171, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.