Judge Grants Final Approval of AstraZeneca Settlement
Judge Patti B. Saris, on February 8, 2011, gave final approval orally to the class action settlement reached between defendant AstraZeneca and Classes II and III (including third party payors and certain consumers) in the AWP litigation where Wexler Wallace is co-lead counsel.
Final approval had been given to a settlement for Class I (consumers only). Today’s settlement created a fund of $103 million in connection with an alleged scheme by AstraZeneca to market the cancer drug Zoladex through the use of an artificially high benchmark price (AWP) for the drug.
Wexler Wallace has been pursuing the AWP litigation against multiple pharmaceutical companies for 10 years. Two settlements continue to wend their way through the approval process, one with Bristol Meyers Squibb ($24 million) and the other with a number of Track II defendants ($125 million). If all goes well, the litigation will finally be concluded in the summer of 2011.