February 28, 2025 10:50 a.m. 

Calling it a groundbreaking case, Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield has reached a settlement involving a monopoly on testosterone replacement gels.

A release from the Department of Justice Office of the Attorney General said the $9,25 million settlement includes $6,197,500 in disgorged profits and penalties along with attorney fees and costs.

Rayfield claims the drug companies, AbbVie and Besins, were gaming the system – preventing competitors from manufacturing generic versions of the gels, by filing lawsuits to extend the amount of time they could charge customers high prices.

Rayfield said, “These are the sneaky legal tricks that pharmaceutical companies will use to keep drug prices high for as long as they can”. Rayfield said, “Its unacceptable and a direct attack on people who are just trying to get by. It’s a violation of trust that should exist between consumers and the companies that provide life-changing medications”.

Oregon filed its case after the Federal Trade Commission won a similar case and obtained a $448 million disgorgement remedy – that the U.S. Supreme Court later threw out. The court claimed the FTC Act did not provide for a disgorgement remedy. This removed a powerful federal tool to force companies to return profits based on inflated prices.

The release said Oregon does have a remedy in place and was the only state to file an action seeking to recover profits from these drug companies.

Rayfield said, “We’ve seen that the federal government is scaling back a number of restrictions. The state attorneys general have to stand up and fill the hole that is left to protect our consumers”.

Some of the settlement will go to Oregon Medicaid, which paid the inflated prices for the testosterone gel, and part of it will go to the protection and education fund for the Oregon Department of Justice. Some will also be bookmarked for the antitrust and consumer protection divisions.