The jury in Frankfort, Kentucky, deliberated for slightly more than two hours before returning the verdict today following a three-week trial. The panel also awarded $100 in punitive damages. The state had requested $16 million in compensation plus an unspecified punitive award.
The ruling is the latest legal setback for AstraZeneca over the way it set drug prices. The company was ordered by a jury in Alabama last year to pay $215 million for overcharging that state’s Medicaid program. A judge later reduced the total to $160 million, and AstraZeneca is appealing. A federal judge in Boston told the company in 2007 to pay $12.9 million for overcharges, a decision upheld by an appeals court last month.
“We are thrilled with the verdict,” Allison Martin, a spokeswoman for Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway, said in an interview. The $100 punitive award “is not disappointing when you have a $14.7 million award,” she said.
The state accused AstraZeneca of posting AWP prices that were much higher than what doctors and pharmacists actually paid for the medicines, and of “marketing the spread” to win business.
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