Shkreli, Vyera Withdraw Jury Demands in FTC Suit, as States Agree to Forego Civil Penalties/Forfeitures

In a recently filed joint stipulation, Vyera Pharmaceuticals, its former CEO, Martin Shkreli, and other defendants agreed to withdraw their demands for a jury trial in a lawsuit brought by the Federal Trade Commission and seven state attorneys general, alleging that Shkreli and his company Vyera engaged in a scheme to protect its monopoly for the anti-parasite drug, Daraprim.  In exchange, the States withdrew with prejudice any claims for civil penalties or forfeitures they previously made against Shkreli and other named defendants.

Shkreli and Vyera (formerly Turing Pharmaceuticals) made headlines in 2015 after Shkreli, then the company’s CEO, increased the per-tablet price of Daraprim from $17.50 to $750 – a more than 4,000% increase.  The FTC and New York filed their lawsuit against Shkreli and Vyera in January 2020, also naming as defendants Vyera’s parent company, Phoenixus AG, and Phoenixus’ former Chairman Kevin Mulleady. California, Illinois, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia joined the lawsuit three months later.  The FTC and the States allege that Vyera engaged in an elaborate anticompetitive scheme to preserve its monopoly, including preventing would-be generic competitors from acquiring samples of the drug for FDA-mandated bioequivalence testing, restricting competitors’ access to the active pharmaceutical ingredient in Daraprim, and imposing “data-blocking” agreements on Vyera’s distributors so that generic competitors would not have access to information used to assess whether a given development project is worth pursuing.