US: Teva wraps up Cipro pay-for-delay

Shortly after paying $520 million to the feds to resolve bribery charges in a couple of markets outside of the US, Teva has agreed to deal terms to settle a lengthy class action lawsuit in California.

The Israeli pharma giant agreed to a $225 million settlement with a group that brought Bayer’s antibiotic Cipro, Reuters reports. The plaintiffs argued that alleged pay-for-delay deals from the 1990s between Bayer and Teva’s Barr Laboratories led to higher prices and violated antitrust law, according to the news service.

The plaintiffs brought the case against Barr in 2000. Eight years later, Teva picked up Barr for nearly $9 billion.

In a statement, a Teva spokesperson said the company “reached a settlement in the pending Cipro antitrust litigation that was inherited when Teva acquired Barr in 2008. Teva is pleased that this long-standing litigation has been resolved.”

California’s Supreme Court will need to sign off on the settlement, according to Reuters.

Teva’s deal comes on the heels of a separate pay-for-delay settlement between the FTC and Endo Pharmaceutical, reached just days ago. As authorities announced that arrangement, they said they’d continue to pursue a case against Watson and Allergan.

The new Teva agreement closely follows another move by the company to wrap up a legal issue with federal authorities: violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Back in December, Teva agreed to a settlement worth nearly $520 million to resolve bribery charges in several markets. In that case, a criminal fine to the DOJ totaled more than $283 million, and Teva paid $236 million to the SEC.

Full Content: Fierce Pharma

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