The Daily Journal (subscription) has named its Top Antitrust Lawyers in California, a list that includes Lieff Cabraser partners Brendan P. Glackin and Dean M. Harvey. Brendan and Dean are featured in the Daily Journal’s “2020 Top Antitrust Lawyers in California” special edition, which discusses their past successes and ongoing case work in individual profiles.
The special edition highlights Brendan’s groundbreaking work as lead trial counsel for plaintiffs in the Lovenox/Enoxaparin Drug Antitrust class action against Momenta Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and Sandoz Inc. for illegally conspiring to prevent other drug companies from competing in the sale of enoxaparin, a life-saving drug used in the treatment of heart attacks and to prevent and control deep vein thrombosis.
On May 29, 2020, the Court granted final approval of the $120 million settlement in the complex antitrust class action, making it the second largest indirect-purchaser antitrust pharmaceutical settlement fund in history.
The Journal notes that to achieve the settlement, Brendan “offered a never-before-tried theory of liability,” based on claims that a top scientist at Momenta secretly obtained a patent on the essential technique used for testing any generic competitor.
“That way, he could prevent anybody else from making a generic, keeping the price high,” noted Brendan.
Separately, the Journal focused on Dean’s work both founding and chairing Lieff Cabraser’s Labor Antitrust practice group, the first and only practice group of its kind. A distinction, which The Journal notes, came in handy during the antitrust class action lawsuit against Duke University and Duke University Health System, led by Dean, over an alleged agreement between Duke and the University of North Carolina not to hire each other’s medical faculty. The action was filed on behalf of Dr. Danielle Seaman and a proposed class of similarly-situated employees of Duke and UNC.
The class action resulted in a 54.5 million settlement for 5,000 academic physicians at Duke and UNC.
“We put on our detective hats and found the agreement was enforced school-wide,” Dean said. Because of this new finding and because the Seaman case included only medical staff as plaintiffs, in May of 2020, Dean filed a follow-on class action on behalf of all non-medical faculty at the two universities.
“The schools’ defense in the first case was that the agreement didn’t really exist during the time of the class period and that, anyway, given the nationwide competition among schools for faculty, it couldn’t have had much impact,” noted Dean. “We think we understand the background and that we have a pretty good case with the new suit too.”
Congratulations to both Brendan and Dean on this prestigious recognition!
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