PRESS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Michael Undorf

Phone: (302) 577-8924

Date: June 1, 2004

CONSUMERS WILL SOON RECEIVE SETTLEMENT CHECKS FROM ANTITRUST LITIGATION FOR PURCHASES OF TAXOL

(Wilmington, DE): Attorney General M. Jane Brady today announced that settlement checks returning $8,400 to sixteen Delaware consumers who submitted claims for purchases of the anticancer drug Taxol® or its generic form paclitaxel will be mailed beginning Tuesday, June 1, 2004. A letter from Attorney General Brady explaining the payments will accompany the checks.



The settlement was recovered in an antitrust case in federal District Court for the District of Columbia in which Attorney General Brady, joined the attorneys general of the other 49 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories as counsel for a class of individual consumers who paid for Taxol® and its generic equivalent paclitaxel. The lawsuit asserted that, because of invalid patents claimed by Bristol-Myers Squibb Company for its anticancer drug Taxol®, lower cost generic substitutes were delayed in arriving on the market resulting in higher prices to those who paid for the drug. In November 2003 the Court approved a settlement negotiated by the Attorneys General on behalf of consumers in all the states and territories. 



Attorney General Brady said, “Bristol-Myers Squibb’s invalid patent claims took advantage of consumers in their weakest moments. As a result of this settlement, consumers who were overcharged for a critical anticancer drug will receive payment.”



As a result of that settlement individuals who paid all or part of the cost for treatments with Taxol® or paclitaxel, during the period from January 1, 1999 through February 28, 2003, and who submitted valid claims during the court-established claims period ending February 29, 2004, will receive reimbursement of at least $525. Consumers who paid the entire cost for two or more treatments will be paid $438 for each such treatment. Nationally, 12,723 consumers will recover a total of $7,242,114. 

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