Abbott ordered to pay Glaxo $3.5 mil in HIV drug suit
Abbott Laboratories must pay GlaxoSmithKline Plc $3.5 million in damages in an antitrust lawsuit claiming Abbott sought to stifle competition over HIV drugs when it quadrupled the price of its AIDS medicine Norvir in 2003, a federal jury said.
A federal jury in Oakland, California,Tuesday rejected claims that Libertyville Township-based Abbott tried to maintain an illegal monopoly, while finding the company breached an agreement with Glaxo that allowed Glaxo to promote its AIDS drugs for use with Norvir, a boosting agent for other HIV drugs.
Glaxo's lawyers argued at trial that the price increase meant that other drugmakers couldn't compete with Abbott's Kaletra AIDS medicine, which includes Norvir.
The London-based drugmaker claimed it lost an estimated $570 million in profit on sales of its drug Lexiva, which uses Norvir, because it sold at half the rate the company expected. Glaxo was seeking damages of triple those losses at trial.
Abbott's attorneys told the jury that the company increased Norvir's prices for legitimate business purposes. Even with the higher price, Kaletra lost market share and had only 30 percent of the market for similar drugs, the company has said.
Abbott increased the wholesale price of a Norvir capsule containing 100 milligrams from $1.71 to $8.57, the company said in court documents.
Adelle Infante, a spokeswoman for Abbott, said the company is pleased that the jury found Abbott's pricing action did not violate federal antitrust laws.
“We believe Abbott's decision to re-price Norvir in light of its new use as a low-dose booster was appropriate,” she said in an e-mail. “We are disappointed that the jury found that Abbott breached its license agreement with GSK and we are considering our options, including whether to appeal the jury's decision. However, the jury's awarding of $3.4 million dollars in damages, instead of the $571 million that GSK was asking for, confirms our view that GSK's alleged damages were inaccurate and inflated.”
The foreman of the 12-member jury, Michael Friedman, a former lawyer who is now a life coach, said in an interview that the panel relied on documents in evidence, and particularly Glaxo “strategy documents,” to reach its conclusion rejecting the monopoly claims.
“GSK wanted us to carry damages out to 2017, but we decided the market was disrupted for three months,” he said. Jurors focused on prescriptions sold by Glaxo in the three months immediately following the market disruption and used that to calculate lost sales during the preceding period of sales disruption.
Lawyers on both sides declined to comment after the verdict.