BOSTON (Legal Newsline) – The feds’ price-fixing lawsuit against Teva Pharmaceuticals over the multiple sclerosis drug Copaxone might be sent to another judge.
The company on Sept. 15 asked a Boston federal judge to essentially consolidate the case with one filed earlier against Regeneron Pharmaceuticals. The allegations overlap, Teva says, even though the federal government didn’t mark them as related.
Teva wants Judge Nathanial Gorton to move the latter case to Judge Dennis Saylor, who is presiding over the first. The federal government plans to fight the request.
“Although the specific factual allegations, including the witness and drug-related allegations differ, the United States’ allegations in the Regeneron and Teva complaints contain substantially the same general factual allegations,” Teva’s lawyers wrote.
The feds filed a lawsuit Aug. 18 against the company under the False Claims Act and the Anti-Kickback Statute. When a Medicare patient purchased the drug, Teva had two foundations pay the co-pay, which resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in kickbacks and a rise in the drug’s cost, the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit says Copaxone’s price rose at a rate more than 19 times the rate of inflation, and the Medicare program ended up paying more than it should have.
Teva paid the Chronic Disease Fund and The Assistance Fund more than $300 million to cover co-pay obligations of Medicare patients, the suit says.
Regeneron is also alleged to have used the Chronic Disease Fund to subsidize co-pays for Eylea, a drug that treats wet age-related macular degeneration.