Bristol-Myers Squibb Company ("BMY" or the Company) purportedly discovers, develops, licenses, manufactures, markets, distributes, and sells biopharmaceutical products globally.
The original Complaint alleges violations of the federal securities laws by BMY and certain of its present and or former executives. As alleged in the Complaint, on March 22, 2006, BMY announced that it, along with Sanofi-Aventis SA, entered into a settlement agreement with Apotex, Inc. to resolve a patent infringement lawsuit (Apotex Settlement) related to the drug Plavix.
The Complaint further alleges that throughout the Class Period, BMY failed to disclose material facts regarding the Apotex Settlement, including (1) that BMY had relinquished material rights in connection with the settlement, including the right to treble damages; (2) that if the Apotex Settlement was not approved, Apotex could flood the market with its generic version of Plavix; and (3) that BMY had negotiated improper side agreements in connection with the Apotex Settlement. On July 27, 2006, BMY revealed that the Antitrust Division of the United States Department of Justice was conducting a criminal investigation into the Apotex Settlement and, as alleged, as a result of this disclosure, the price of BMY's securities declined $1.95 per share, or 7.5%, to close at $24.04 per share. On August 8, 2006, BMY disclosed additional material facts regarding the Apotex Settlement. As a result of this disclosure, it is alleged that BMY's securities declined $1.56 per share, or approximately 7%, to close at $21.21 per share. The Complaint also alleges that on May 10, 2007 BMY issued a press release disclosing that the Company agreed to plead guilty to federal charges of making false statements to a government agency in connection with the Apotex Settlement.
According to the Company’s FORM 10-Q for the Quarterly Period Ended September 30, 2007, in June and July 2007, two putative class action Complaints, Minneapolis Firefighters’ Relief Assoc. v. Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., et al., 07 CV 5867 and Jean Lai v. Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, et al., were filed in the U.S. District for the Southern District of New York against the Company, the Company’s former CEO and current Chief Financial Officer. The Complaints allege violations of securities laws for allegedly failing to disclose material information relating to efforts to settle the PLAVIX* patent infringement litigation with Apotex. On September 20, 2007, the Court dismissed the Lai case without prejudice, changed the caption of the case to In re Bristol-Myers Squibb, Co. Securities Litigation, and appointed Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board as lead Plaintiff. On October 15, 2007, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board filed an amended Complaint making similar allegations as the earlier filed Complaints, but no longer naming the Company’s Chief Financial Officer as a Defendant.
In November 2007, the Defendants filed various motions to dismiss the Amended Complaint. These motions were then pending before the Court.
In a press release dated August 21, 2008, Judge Paul A. Crotty in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York handed down the order Tuesday, denying BMS and the two former executives’ motion to dismiss an amended Complaint filed jointly by the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan Board and the Minneapolis Firefighters’ Relief Association. … “The Court finds that the plaintiffs have pleaded their claims with sufficient particularity to survive the threshold pleading standard of a motion to dismiss, and that plaintiffs have plausibly alleged that Bristol-Myers’ silence with regard to the details of the Apotex settlement made its public statements misleading or false,” Crotty wrote.
According to an article dated June 16, 2009, BMY has reached the outline of a settlement in a securities class action that accuses the drugmaker of duping shareholders and causing a stock drop when it failed to properly disclose a patent deal for a generic version of its blood-thinning drug Plavix. In an endorsed letter dated June 3 but entered into the docket Monday, an attorney for the Plaintiffs, Salvatore Graziano of Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossman LLP, said that the parties had reached an agreement in principle on a settlement in the case and that limited further discovery was taking place in order to finalize the deal. “We request that all current court proceedings be suspended and all currently scheduled deadlines be adjourned pending this process,” he wrote in the letter. Graziano declined to comment further on the details of the settlement. BMY declined to comment as well.
On August 18, 2009, the Court preliminarily approved the proposed settlement in the amount of $125 million. The Settlement Hearing was scheduled for December 8, 2009, at 2 p.m., at which time the Court shall address the fairness, reasonableness and adequacy of the Settlement, the fairness and reasonableness of the Plan of Allocation, and lead Counsel's application for attorneys' fees and payment of Litigation Expenses.
According to a press release dated December 9, 2009, BMY won final court approval of a $125 million settlement of a lawsuit in which creditors claimed the drugmaker hid information about its effort to settle a patent suit with Apotex Inc. The case against New York-based BMY, filed in 2007, settled in principle in May. U.S. District Judge Paul Crotty in Manhattan yesterday granted final approval of the accord. He previously gave preliminary approval. … “The court hereby finds and concludes that the plan of allocation proposed by lead plaintiff is, in all respects, fair and equitable to the class,” Crotty wrote. Lawyers from Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossman LLP were awarded fees of $21.25 million, or 17 percent of the settlement fund.
