Subsidiaries of pharmaceutical company Allergan will pay $750 million to resolve a class action lawsuit from a group of direct purchasers of Alzheimer’s drug Namenda (memantine).
“The settlement makes no admission of wrongdoing on the part of the company and resolves the litigation that was scheduled to go to trial in October 2019,” Allergan said in announcing the agreement.
The settlement with Allergan subsidiaries Forest Laboratories, LLC; Forest Laboratories, Inc.; and Forest Laboratories Holdings Ltd. is subject to court approval. Forest became a wholly owned subsidiary of Actavis plc in June 2014; afterward, Actavis changed its corporate name to Allergan.
The lawsuit, Reuters reported, alleged that Forest tried to delay generic competition for the drug by discontinuing a twice-daily formulation and replacing it with another, once-daily formulation before the planned launch of a generic pill. The move, the plaintiff alleged, meant that people taking the twice-daily formulation of the medication had to switch to the new formulation of the brand-name drug because the generic formulation wasn’t available yet.
The lawsuit also alleged that Forest entered into an illegal agreement with a competitor to try to stop competition, Reuters said.
