Heim, Payne & Chorush Helps Direct Purchasers of Lipitor® Secure $93 Million Pfizer Settlement in Antitrust MDL
Attorneys from Heim, Payne & Chorush, LLP, recently assisted their clients in securing a $93 million settlement with pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, Inc. in New Jersey federal court in a long-running antitrust lawsuit relating to Pfizer’s popular Lipitor® cholesterol medication.
Heim, Payne & Chorush partners Russell Chorush, Blaine Larson, and Allan Bullwinkel, and associates Carlos Ruiz, Kyle Ruvolo, and Michael Dunbar, along with several law firms from across the U.S., represent direct purchasers of Lipitor® in the multidistrict litigation. Their antitrust claims allege that Pfizer perpetuated its Lipitor® monopoly by paying Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd. to refrain from marketing a less expensive generic version of Lipitor®.
The $93 million settlement announced on February 7 will be paid to direct purchasers of Lipitor® or Ranbaxy’s generic version of Lipitor® from June 2011 through May 2012. Pfizer did not admit liability or wrongdoing in the agreement, which followed more than a decade of litigation.
The case is Lipitor Antitrust Litigation, No. 3:12-cv-02389, in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey.
Led by Dr. Chorush, the antitrust team at Heim, Payne & Chorush represents various businesses in claims brought under the Sherman Antitrust Act and the Supreme Court’s decision in FTC v. Actavis, Inc. In addition to the Lipitor® litigation, the firm actively represents or has previously represented direct purchasers in cases involving the pharmaceutical drug products Namenda®, Provigil®, Tricor®, Neurontin®, Buspar®, K-Dur®, Aggrenox®, Lidoderm®, Neurontin®, Colcrys®, Bystolic®, Seroquel XR®, Niaspan®, and AndroGel®.