Blood Reagents
Practice Area: AntitrustMary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital Inc. v. Immucor, Inc., 09-Civ-5007-WHP (S.D.N.Y.)
On May 28, 2009, Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC filed a class action complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on behalf of Plaintiff Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital Inc. and a class of all persons and entities in the United States who purchased Blood Reagents directly from Defendants Immucor, Inc. (“Immucor”) or Ortho-Clinical Diagnostics, Inc. (“Ortho-Clinical”) at any time from September 1, 2000 through the present.
Plaintiff alleges that Defendants conspired, combined or contracted to fix, raise, maintain or stabilize the prices of Blood Reagents that they sold to Plaintiff and the other Class members during the Class Period, a per se violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1. As a result of Defendants’ unlawful conduct, Plaintiff and the other Class members paid supra-competitive prices for Blood Reagents.
This lawsuit follows closely on the heels of a criminal antitrust investigation that the United States Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division (“DOJ”) has initiated against Defendants concerning Blood Reagents. On April 24, 2009, Immucor announced that it received a grand jury subpoena from the DOJ requesting documents from September 1, 2000 through the present regarding an investigation of possible violations of the federal criminal antitrust laws in the blood reagents industry. Shortly thereafter, on May 5, 2009, Johnson & Johnson disclosed that its subsidiary, Ortho-Clinical, also received a grand jury subpoena from the DOJ in April 2009 requesting documents from September 1, 2000 through the present concerning the same investigation.
Defendants are the dominant players in the U.S. blood reagents industry. Blood Reagents are used in tests performed prior to blood transfusions to determine the blood group and type of patients’ and donors’ blood, in the detection and identification of blood group antibodies, in platelet antibody detection, in paternity testing and in prenatal care. Defendants are the only two domestic companies that offer a full line of Blood Reagents, which includes reagent red blood cells, antibodies blood groupings (A, B, AB, and O), Rhesus (Rh) factor (positive and negative) blood typing, anti-human globulin serums (Coombs Serums), rare serums, and antibody potentiators. For purposes of the lawsuit, Blood Reagents does not include proprietary blood reagents, and is limited to traditional blood reagents.