Direct Purchasers of Suboxone Certified as a Class in Product Hop Case

On September 26, 2019, Judge Mitchell S. Goldberg of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania certified a class of direct purchasers of Reckitt Benckiser’s opioid addiction drug, Suboxone, and appointed Faruqi & Faruqi, LLP as Co-Lead Counsel for the class. 

In In re Suboxone, plaintiffs allege that Reckitt reformulated its original Suboxone tablet into a different Suboxone formulation—an oral film—in order to suppress generic competition for the drug.  Reckitt ultimately withdrew its Suboxone tablets from the market.  Plaintiffs further allege that Reckitt undertook additional actions to delay generic entry, including filing baseless citizen petitions with the Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) to sabotage the FDA’s Abbreviated New Drug Application process for approving generic alternatives, and obstructing efforts to create a joint REMS program (a drug safety program required for certain medications).

In its Order, the Court certified a class of “[a]ll persons or entities in the United States and its territories who purchased branded Suboxone tablets directly from Reckitt at any time during the period January 1, 2012 through March 14, 2013.”

A copy of the Order can be found here.