In In re: Skelaxin (Metaxalone) Antitrust Litigation, Eastern District of Tennessee Judge Curtis L. Collier denied a motion to dismiss multidistrict litigation accusing King Pharmaceuticals, a Pfizer subsidiary, and Mutual Pharmaceutical Co. Inc. of conspiring to keep generic versions of the muscle relaxer drug Skelaxin off the market. In 2005, King and Mutual settled infringement litigation through a pay-for-delay settlement.
The plaintiffs — including retail pharmacies, labor organizations, health insurance companies, and drug consumers — alleged that the defendants conspired to raise the drug’s price by restricting output of the drug through the settlement. The complaint also says King filed sham patent infringement suits, and that the two defendants filed meritless petitions” with the U.S. FDA. The defendants countered that the settlement was a lawful cross-licensing deal.
The defendants sought dismissal on the ground that the plaintiffs failed to plausibly establish antitrust injury or prove that the alleged scheme had anticompetitive effect. Judge Collier disagreed, ruling that the plaintiffs had plausibly alleged King and Mutual had filed sham patent litigation designed to gain access to antitrust immunity and that the plaintiffs had sufficiently alleged that the unsupported FDA citizen petitions were objectively baseless shams filed subjectively in bad faith.