As The Am Law Litigation Daily reported last week, AstraZeneca received some bad news on Wednesday from the 1st Circuit, which affirmed a lower court’s ruling in a test case in the multi-district proceeding over drug companies’ alleged manipulation of average wholesale prices for drugs. Although the 1st Circuit ruling spells trouble for the company in the MDL, plaintiffs attorney Steven Berman of Hagens Berman told us that it may not have an impact on the cases brought against AstraZeneca by various state and local governments, which are using slightly different theories to show that Big Pharma manipulated the published prices of their drugs.
On Tuesday, AstraZeneca is set to go to trial in one of those cases, squaring off against the state of Kentucky. AstraZeneca will be represented by John Schmidtlein and Gerson Zweifach of Williams & Connolly and Margaret Keane of Greenebaum Doll & McDonald. For Kentucky, it will be Charles Barnhill, William Dixon, George Galland and Robert Liban of Miner Barnhill & Galland; P. Jeffrey Archibald of the Archibald Consumer Law Office; Michael Winget Hernandez of Winget-Hernandez; and David Johnstone, Paula Hollbrook; and Pamela Murphy from the office of Kentucky’s attorney general. Courtroom View Network will be offering free clips of the trial on Thursday.
