Featured Cases > Average Wholesale Price (AWP)

In re Pharmaceutical Industry Average Wholesale Price Litigation, MDL No.1456 (D. Mass.).

It seems like people are constantly asking about the reasons drug prices are so high. One of the reasons is drug companies’ publication of a price called Average Wholesale Price, or AWP. While AWP was originally intended to represent the price that drug wholesalers purchased drugs from pharmaceutical manufacturers, many drug companies have manipulated that price so that federal and state governments, third party payors and consumers have vastly overpaid for drugs. To address this conduct, during early 2002, WW initiated a wave of 14 class actions nationwide against the dominant pharmaceutical manufacturers to immediately stop the fraudulent publication of AWP. These cases, which were consolidated in Boston, Massachusetts, allege that pharmaceutical manufacturers like Abbott, AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Baxter and GlaxoSmithKline, routinely inflate the AWP they report to trade publications, causing those who purchase and reimburse for drugs to vastly over pay for them.

Discovery in these cases has included the review of millions of documents and hundreds of depositions over the past several years. On August 16, 2005, the presiding judge, the Honorable Patti B. Saris, issued a class certification order that set the groundwork for WW and its co-counsel to allow their cases to proceed on a classwide basis against the defendant drug companies for their conduct with regard to physician-administered drugs, or drugs that are administered in the form of an injection as opposed to a pill. The trial against four of the largest defendants began in November 2006 concluded January 26, 2007, with WW's Jennifer Connolly acting as one of the trial attorneys. The parties are expecting a written ruling from Judge Saris by August of this year. For an article describing some of the documents used during that trial, click here.