Attorneys general sue generic drugmakers

Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller on Thursday joined 19 state attorneys general in filing a federal antitrust lawsuit against generic drugmaker Heritage Pharmaceuticals, Mylan NV, Teva Pharmaceuticals and three other drug companies saying they entered into illegal conspiracies that raised prices on two common generic drugs.

The lawsuit is one piece of broader generic drug pricing probe underway on the state and federal level, as well as in the U.S. Congress. It has grown over the past two years to include multiple drugs and companies, some of which have disclosed they are being investigated by the U.S. Justice Department.

The drugs involved in Thursday's lawsuit are the delayed release version of a common antibiotic, doxycycline hyclate, and glyburide, an older drug used to treat diabetes.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut, also names Australian drugmaker Mayne Pharma, Aurobindo Pharma and Citron Pharma LLC. Heritage is characterized in the lawsuit as the 'principal architect and ringleader” that helped organize a 'wide-ranging series of conspiracies” to fix prices.

It alleges that top executives of the drug companies and their sales executives propped up the prices of the two drugs by fixing their prices or allocating markets. The states also say in their lawsuit that executives knew that the conduct was illegal and either deleted emails or made efforts to avoid communicating in writing.

'Companies that collude and fix prices for generic drugs in order to pad their profits must be held accountable for the very real harm they inflict on New Yorkers' ability to pay for lifesaving medications,” New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said in a statement.

The state attorneys' investigation into drug price fixing found evidence of broad, well-coordinated schemes on a number of generic drugs and is ongoing, according to the complaint.

The U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit this week against two former Heritage executives alleging that they colluded to fix the prices of doxycycline hyclate, and to split up the market for glyburide.