State officials nationwide are sending settlement checks to 76,000 consumers who purchased the prescription heart medication Cardizem CD between 1998 and 2004.
More than $24 million will be distributed to compensate more than 76,000 individual consumers to compensate for overpayment for Cardizem CD and its generic equivalents between 1998 and 2004.. The states plan to distribute money to consumers was approved by U.S. District Court Judge Nancy Edmunds on May 31, 2005, after the U. S. Supreme Court refused on May 23, 2005, to review the settlement.
The settlement resulted from more than five years of litigation begun by private plaintiffs against Aventis Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Andrx Corporation and affiliated entities. The lawsuit alleged that Aventis and Andrx violated antitrust laws when they illegally agreed that Aventis would pay Andrx nearly $90 million to stop Andrx from bringing its less expensive generic version of Cardizem CD to market.
The delay in the availability of the generic form of Cardizem CD meant consumers, medical insurance companies and the government had to purchase the higher-priced brand name version of the drug for at least an extra year, the Attorneys General alleged.
Further details are available on the settlement administrators website: www.cardizemsettlement.com.
