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U.S. states sue Mylan, Teva, others for fixing drug prices

A person holds pharmaceutical tablets and capsules in this picture illustration taken in Ljubljana

y Diane Bartz and Sarah N. Lynch

(Reuters) – Twenty states filed a lawsuit Thursday against Mylan, Teva Pharmaceuticals and four other generic drug makers, saying they conspired on pricing of two common generic drugs, according to a copy of the complaint.

The civil lawsuit is one piece of a broader generic drug pricing probe that remains under way at the state and federal level, as well as in the U.S. Congress. The inquiries have grown over the past two years to include multiple drugs and companies, some of which have disclosed they are being investigated by the Justice Department.

The drugs involved in Thursday’s lawsuit include the delayed release version of a common antibiotic, doxycycline hyclate; and glyburide, an older drug used to treat diabetes.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut, names Heritage Pharmaceuticals Inc as a “ring leader” of the price manipulation, and also lists Mayne Pharma, Aurobindo Pharma and Citron Pharma LLC as participants.

Asked for comment on Thursday, a spokesman for Heritage referred to their comment from the previous day, which blamed the former executives for the price-fixing and said that they had been terminated. Heritage is part of Indian company Emcure Pharmaceuticals.

Mylan denied the charge. “To date, we know of no evidence that Mylan participated in price fixing,” Mylan spokeswoman Nina Devlin said by email.

Teva spokeswoman Denise Bradley said by email that the company had just received the complaint and was reviewing it.

The other three companies had no immediate comment.

Teva shares were off 0.4 percent at $36.84 in New York trading. Mylan’s rose 0.9 percent at $38.01. Mylan has also come under fire for hiking the price of the Epipen to $600 for a two-pack, from $100.

The lawsuit alleges that top executives of the drug companies and their sales executives propped up the prices of the two drugs either by setting the prices or allocating markets, the New York attorney general’s office said in the statement.

The states also say in their lawsuit that executives knew that the conduct was illegal and either deleted emails or made efforts to avoid communicating in writing.

“Companies that collude and fix prices for generic drugs in order to pad their profits must be held accountable for the very real harm they inflict on New Yorkers’ ability to pay for life-saving medications,” New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said in a statement.

The state attorneys’ investigation into drug price fixing found evidence of broad, well-coordinated schemes on a number of generic drugs and is ongoing, according to the complaint.

The U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit this week against two former Heritage executives alleging that they colluded to fix the prices of doxycycline hyclate, and to split up the market for glyburide.

Generic drug pricing became an issue in 2014, driven in large part by media reports of sharply rising drug prices, and Congress opened an investigation.

The lead state in the probe was Connecticut and the other states involved are Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Washington.

MH370 report says plane in ‘increasing rate of descent’ when it vanished

Family members of passengers onboard the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 comfort a crying woman as they gather to pray at Yonghegong Lama Temple in Beijing September 8, 2014, on the six-month anniversary of the disappearance of the plane.

SYDNEY, Nov 2 (Reuters) – A new report into missing Malaysia Airlines MH370 says that additional analysis of satellite communications from the aircraft was consistent with it being in a “high and increasing rate of descent” when it vanished.

The report by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), which is leading the search for MH370, said additional analysis of wing flap debris found the aircraft was not configured for a landing.

Both pieces of information support the agency’s long-held view that an unpiloted MH370 descended rapidly after running out of fuel with no human intervention.

The 28-page report released on Wednesday, containing new end-of-flight and drift simulations, coincides with the start of a three-day meeting of international experts to develop potential plans to continue the search for MH370.

The Boeing 777 disappeared on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in March 2014 with 239 passengers and crew on board, sparking a two-and-a-half year search that has focused on the Indian Ocean.

Authorities from Malaysia, Australia and China initially expected to finish searching a 120,000 sq km (46,000 sq mile) target area by the end of 2016, but bad weather has delayed the probe by another two months.

Australian Transport Minister Darren Chester, who is chairing the Canberra meeting of experts, said the group would review all available data and analysis associated with the search.

“The experts will also inform the remainder of the search effort and develop guidance for any future search operations,” Chester said in a statement.

The ATSB report suggests that experts believe the current search area is the most likely to contain the crash site.

In a separate development, a lawyer for the families of four Australian victims told Reuters that Malaysia Airlines has
agreed to release information about the missing plane as part of a compensation case.

John Dawson, a partner at Carneys Lawyers, said he had been advised he would receive the information by the end of the month. The information is to include medical certificates held by the flight crew.

(Reporting by Colin Packham and Jane Wardell; Editing by
Michael Perry)

U.S. House votes to allow Sept. 11 families to sue Saudi Arabia

By Patricia Zengerle

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation on Friday that would allow the families of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks to sue Saudi Arabia’s government for damages, despite the White House’s threat to veto the measure.

The U.S. Senate in May unanimously passed the “Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act,” known as JASTA. The bill’s passage in the House by voice vote, two days before the 15th anniversary of the attacks that killed about 3,000 people, was greeted with cheers and applause in the chamber.

“We can no longer allow those who injure and kill Americans to hide behind legal loopholes, denying justice to the victims of terrorism,” said Republican Representative Bob Goodlatte, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

Fifteen of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers who crashed airliners in New York, outside Washington and in Pennsylvania were Saudi nationals. The Saudi government, which strongly denies responsibility, has lobbied against the bill.

Opponents of the measure said it could strain relations with Saudi Arabia and lead to retaliatory laws that would allow foreign nationals to sue Americans for alleged involvement in terrorist attacks.

The White House on Friday reiterated that President Barack Obama would veto the bill. [nW1N12802E]

If Obama carries out that threat and the required two-thirds of both the Republican-majority House and Senate still support the bill, it would be the first time since Obama’s presidency began in 2009 that Congress had overridden a veto.

The House passed the measure by voice vote, without objections or recorded individual votes. That could make it easier for Obama’s fellow Democrats to uphold his veto later without officially changing their positions.

JASTA would remove sovereign immunity, preventing lawsuits against governments, for countries found to be involved in terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. It also would allow survivors, and relatives of those killed in them to seek damages from other countries.

In this case, it would allow suits to proceed in federal court in New York as lawyers try to prove that the Saudis were involved in the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Backers say passage is long overdue. They argue that if Saudi Arabia, or any other government, is innocent of involvement in attacks, they have nothing to fear from the legislation.

A member of the French parliament, Pierre Lellouche, said he would consider such legislation in France, and would anticipate it elsewhere, if the final version of JASTA does not include waivers for countries that are U.S. allies and actively involved in fighting terrorism.

“It may trigger similar acts all over the place, and then you enter into a ‘state of jungle’ where everybody sues everybody,” Lellouche, who runs a parliamentary committee on international law, told reporters on a conference call on Friday.

(Additional reporting by Timothy Gardner and Ayesha Rascoe; Editing by Grant McCool and Will Dunham)

Mastercard sued for $19 billion in Britain’s biggest damages claim

By Andrew MacAskill

LONDON (Reuters) – Some 46 million people in Britain could potentially benefit from a legal case brought against Mastercard <MA.N> demanding 14 billion pounds ($19 billion) in damages for allegedly charging excessive fees, according to court documents filed in London.

The case brought by a former chief financial services ombudsman alleges the payments company charged unlawfully high fees to stores when shoppers swiped their debit or credit cards and these were passed on to consumers in higher prices.

Mastercard is alleged to have done this for 16 years between 1992 and 2008, in more than 600 pages of documents filed at the Competition Appeal Tribunal on Thursday.”This was almost an invisible tax,” Walter Merricks, who is bringing the case, told the BBC. “Mastercard has behaved disgracefully in this. They have not had the reasonableness to accept that what this was doing was damaging UK consumers.”

Mastercard said in a statement it denied any wrongdoing.”We continue to firmly disagree with the basis of this claim and we intend to oppose it vigorously,” the world’s second-largest payments network said.

The lawsuit comes after the European Union’s antitrust regulator found in 2014 Mastercard’s fees to store owners to process international payments within the EU were excessive.Law firm Quinn Emanuel said the lawsuit was the largest damages claim in British history and would be brought under a law meaning consumers would automatically be claimants unless they opt out. Any person living in Britain who used a credit card, cash or cheques and was over 16 years old in the period covered by the lawsuit will automatically be part of the claim.If the 14 billion pound claim was shared equally between the number of eligible claimants, each person could receive more than 300 pounds each, according to a Reuters’ calculation.A lawyer working on the case said Mastercard charged shops fees in excess of 1 percent for card use on international transactions between 1992 and 2008.Although the EU’s anti-trust regulator only ruled Mastercard’s international fees were illegal, this impacted British consumers as it was the default fee used in Britain.

Two years ago, the European Union capped the fees retailers pay at 0.2 percent for debit cards and 0.3 percent for credit cards. Merricks in a statement said the case is a watershed moment for consumer compensation in Britain.Merricks was head of Britain’s financial services ombudsmen for ten years until 2009, helping to settle disputes between consumers and financial services companies. Britain’s banks have been caught in a range of misspelling cases in the last five years. They have paid 24 billion pounds in compensation for mis-selling loan payment insurance, making it Britain’s costliest scandal in financial services.Consumers no longer living in Britain, but who lived in the country between 1992 and 2008, can opt in to the collective claim against Mastercard.Any hearing on the case is not expected until early 2018, unless MasterCard settle it out of court.

($1 = 0.7523 pounds)

(Editing by Mark Potter and Alexander Smith)

Black Lives Matter activist sues Baton Rouge police over arrest

(Reuters) – A prominent activist in the Black Lives Matter movement, DeRay McKesson, on Thursday sued the chief of the Baton Rouge police department and other officials over the arrests of nearly 200 demonstrators during peaceful protests about police killings.

In the federal civil rights lawsuit, which seeks class action status, McKesson and fellow protesters Kira Marrero and Gloria La Riva complained that police were unnecessarily aggressive in arresting them on July 9. The lawsuit covers arrests in the Louisiana capital between July 6 and July 11.

The East Baton Rouge Parish Attorney’s Office said they had no immediate comment on the lawsuit.

The activists were protesting the July 5 shooting of a black man, Alton Sterling, outside a convenience store, one of a string of high-profile police killings of black people by white officers over the past two years that were caught on video and reopened debate about race and discrimination in the United States.

McKesson, known for his activism on social media and who ran in the 2016 Democratic Party primary for mayor of his hometown of Baltimore, Maryland, said in the lawsuit that demonstrators sought to have all arrest records expunged as well as unspecified damages.

The allegations in the lawsuit include 16 violations of law by Baton Rouge police, excessive use of force, conspiracy to deprive protesters of their civil rights, negligence and arrests without probable cause.

The 23-page complaint said charges of simple obstruction of a highway against nearly 200 protesters who were arrested were ultimately dropped by the local prosecutors office, though they still had to pay administrative and court fees.

“Throughout the protests, the Defendants responded in a militarized and aggressive manner,” the complaint said. “All class members now have criminal arrest records, which in this digital age could adversely affect their future employment, education, reputations, and professional licensing.”

A day after Sterling’s death, another black man, Philando Castile, was shot to death by a policeman during a traffic stop near St. Paul, Minnesota.

The back-to-back killings brought out protesters nationwide but after a rally in Dallas, Texas, a gunman shot dead five police officers in an ambush. Days later, three Baton Rouge police officers were also killed in an ambush.

Authorities said the shootings of officers by black gunmen were apparently in anger over the deaths of black people at the hands of police, but they were not connected to the peaceful protest movement.

(Reporting by Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; editing by Grant McCool)

University of Texas professors sue to block guns in classrooms

A student walks at the University of Texas campus in Austin, Texas,

By Jon Herskovitz

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) – Three University of Texas professors have filed a federal lawsuit to halt a state law that would allow holders of concealed handgun licenses to bring pistols into classrooms, saying the measure would have a devastating effect on academic discourse.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. district court in Austin on Wednesday, comes just weeks before the law takes effect on Aug. 1. It allows license holders 21 and older to bring handguns into classrooms and buildings throughout the University of Texas system, one of the nation’s largest, with an enrollment of more than 214,000 students.

“Compelling professors at a public university to allow, without any limitation or restriction, students to carry concealed guns in their classrooms chills their First Amendment rights to academic freedom,” according to the lawsuit, whose defendants include the state’s attorney general, the school’s president and university’s board of regents.

The professors argue that they discus controversial and emotionally laden subjects such as reproductive rights and it would be inevitable for them to pull back at important junctures because of a cloud of gun violence hanging over the classroom.

University officials said they were reviewing the lawsuit and typically do not comment on pending litigation. Earlier this year, university President Greg Fenves reluctantly approved plans for holders of concealed handguns to bring pistols into classrooms, saying he had been forced to by the Republican-backed law.

The office of Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, was not immediately available for comment but has said the law protects the rights of gun owners.

Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, has said the law could prevent mass shootings because someone with a licensed concealed weapon could confront a gunman.

The so-called “campus carry” law allows private colleges to opt out and most of the state’s best-known private universities have done so, saying the law runs counter to protecting student safety.

Eight states now have provisions allowing the carrying of concealed weapons on public post-secondary campuses, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, which tracks state laws.

The Texas law takes effect on the 50th anniversary of one of the deadliest U.S. gun incidents on a U.S. college campus: student Charles Whitman killed 16 people by firing from a perch atop the clock tower at the University of Texas at Austin.

(Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

Human rights lawyer Amal Clooney to defend Yazidi women, ISIS sex slaves

By Lin Taylor

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – International human rights lawyer Amal Clooney will defend Yazidi women who have been victims of sexual slavery, rape and genocide by Islamic State militants in Iraq, her law firm said on Friday.

Clooney, a barrister at Doughty Street Chambers in London, is seeking to prosecute the Islamist group through the International Criminal Court for their crimes against the Yazidi community.

“We know that thousands of Yazidi civilians have been killed and that thousands of Yazidi women have been enslaved,” Clooney, who is married to actor George Clooney, said in a statement.

“We know that systematic rapes have taken place, and that they are still taking place,” Clooney said. “And yet no one is being held to account.”

Islamic State militants have killed, raped and enslaved thousands of Yazidis since 2014, accusing them of being devil worshippers and forcing over 400,000 of the religious minority to flee their homes in northern Iraq.

Yazidi campaigners, including Nobel Peace Prize nominee Nadia Murad Basee Taha, have been pushing for international justice for the crimes committed against them by Islamic State.

Taha, 21, took her message to the U.N. Security Council in December last year, and has spoken to successive governments, appealing to the international community to act.

Taha said she was abducted by Islamic State militants from her village in Iraq in August 2014, and taken to the Islamic State stronghold of Mosul, where she and thousands of other Yazidi women and children were exchanged by militants as gifts.

She was tortured and repeatedly raped before she escaped three months later.

According to the United Nations, the Sunni militants enslaved about 7,000 women and girls in 2014, mainly Yazidis whose faith blends elements of Christianity, Zoroastrianism and Islam, and is still holding 3,500, some as sex slaves.

The United States, the European Parliament and the Council of Europe have all described the Islamist militant group’s actions as genocide.

(Reporting by Lin Taylor @linnytayls, Editing by Astrid Zweynert. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters that covers humanitarian issues, conflicts, global land rights, modern slavery and human trafficking, women’s rights, and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org to see more stories)

FFRF Targets Christian Sheriff For Preaching In Uniform

An atheist organization is targeting a Christian sheriff in Lakeland, Florida for preaching at a church while wearing his uniform.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), who routinely targets Christians for harassment and lawsuits, is claiming they received complaints from anonymous residents about Sheriff Grady Judd speaking to churches while in uniform.

“I was invited to this church, as I am to many churches and secular events, and you know what, the message was clear,” Judd told BayNews9. “The message was uplifting. The message talked about and bragged on how wonderful our community was.”

The FFRF took issue with the appearance, claiming that by wearing his uniform Judd is endorsing Christianity.

“Promoting your personal religion using a Polk County government title and uniform gives the unfortunate impression that the county supports and endorses the First Baptist Church on the Mall and its religious teachings,” the letter read.

“Giving this sermon in your official capacity, wearing your official uniform, unabashedly promotes this church and its religious views,” it continued. “You are excluding the nearly 30% of U.S. adults and the 30% of Florida adults who are non-Christian. This message alienates both non-Christians and nonbelievers in Polk County by turning them into political outsiders in their own community.”

Judd said he will not be intimidated by the atheists.

“Let me say this clearly and unequivocally: When people call the sheriff’s office and ask me to come speak, I’m going to come speak, [and] I’m going to wear my uniform,” he told reporters. “You can guarantee it.”

School In Prayer Lawsuit Drops Free Period To End Suit

A Colorado Springs high school that had been at the subject of a lawsuit over banning Christian students from meeting during their “free period” is sidestepping the issues of the suit by eliminating the free period for students.

Now former student of Pine Creek High School, Chase Windebank had been meeting with other Christian students during “seminar”, the school’s version of study hall. The students would meet to pray, sing worship songs and encourage each other in a room away from students who did not have faith.

The school stepped in during Windebank’s senior year and said they would no longer be allowed to meet during the seminar time, because the school considered it to be “instructional time”. The school said they were not violating Windebank’s civil rights by redefining the period to bar the Christian students from meeting.

Windebank filed suit with the help of the Alliance Defending Freedom because other students were still able to express themselves during the free period while the Christians were being blocked.

“I’m actually quite excited that I was able to take this stand and be able to make a victory for free speech in public schools,” he said. “Not just for me because I filed this lawsuit. For those after me as well, being able to express what they believe.”

Windebank says the school has agreed to allow prayer and gathering of students during lunch.

The school claims the suit’s dismissal has nothing to do with a deal and that those who pursued the suit are grandstanding.

“Pine Creek High School has never had, and does not have, a policy in place which restricts students’ rights to associate at lunch, and by extension to meet with others and discuss faith, pray, or talk about the news of the day from a Christian perspective,” he wrote. “As such, no nonexistent policy was revised to achieve the suit’s abandonment.”

Supreme Court Rules Abercrombie & Fitch Discriminated Against Muslim Woman

The Supreme Court has ruled that a woman who was denied a job with the clothing company Abercrombie & Fitch because of her headscarf was discriminated against on the basis of her religion.

The ruling was 8-1 in favor of the woman.

“Thus, the rule for disparate-treatment claims based on a failure to accommodate a religious practice is straightforward: An employer may not make an applicant’s religious practice, confirmed or otherwise, a factor in employment decisions,” Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the 8-1 majority.

The court said that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act requires employers to not consider religious accommodations in hiring processes.

“For example, suppose that an employer thinks (though he does not know for certain) that a job applicant may be an orthodox Jew who will observe the Sabbath, and thus be unable to work on Saturdays. If the applicant actually requires an accommodation of that religious practice, and the employer’s desire to avoid the prospective accommodation is a motivating factor in his decision, the employer violates Title VII,” Justice Scalia wrote.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed suit on behalf of the woman.

Abercrombie claimed they had not violated the law because she had not been denied employment for the head scarf. They said she did not mention during her interview she was wearing the scarf for religious reasons and so it’s not on the company to know that’s why she was wearing it. Scarves are a violation of the company’s employee dress code.

In his dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas said that the company could not be guilty of discrimination because the company’s policy applied to all employees and not just Muslims.

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