CURRAN DISTRIBUTES SETTLEMENT EXCEEDING $90,000 TO MARYLAND CANCER PATIENTS AND THEIR FAMILIES

Attorney General J. Joseph Curran, Jr. today announced that settlement checks returning $90,669.00 to 146 Maryland consumers who submitted claims for purchases of the anti-cancer drug Taxol® or its generic form paclitaxel will be mailed beginning Tuesday, June 1, 2004. A letter from Attorney General Curran, 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 Maryland’s Attorney General, J. Joseph Curran, Jr., and Attorneys General of Ohio and Florida, were lead counsel for a class including citizens of all 50 states, the District of Columbia and the U.S. territories. The lawsuit asserted that, because of invalid patents claimed by Bristol-Myers Squibb Company for its anti-cancer 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.

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. Nationwide, 12,723 consumers will recover a total of $7,242,114.00.

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