May 20, 2025
Johnson & Johnson workers are urging a New Jersey federal court to maintain their proposed class claims that the company botched the management of prescription drug costs in its employee healthcare plan by allowing excessive pharmacy costs, asserting that company mismanagement resulted in concrete harm.
Doubling down on their allegations, named plaintiffs Ann Lewandowski and Robert Gregory filed a brief Monday opposing a motion from J&J to dismiss an amended complaint asserting violations of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act.
“This case presents a textbook example of fiduciary neglect: Defendants — Johnson & Johnson and its Pension & Benefits Committee — handed control of the plan’s prescription-drug program to Express Scripts with virtually no oversight, enabling Express Scripts to extract staggering markups that forced participants to pay inflated costs for essential medications while enriching the very service provider defendants were duty-bound to monitor,” the brief states.
In 2023, Lewandowski overpaid by about $210 for two prescription drugs, compared with retail prices, the brief says. She alleges she was unable to use manufacturer co-pay assistance cards that would have reduced her out-of-pocket expenses, which created a financial injury from J&J’s fiduciary breaches.
Because J&J maintained a fixed ratio between employer and employee contributions to the healthcare plan, increases in plan costs resulted in higher premiums for the workers, the brief says.
Lewandowski, who left J&J in April 2024, and Gregory, who retired in September 2020, paid triple the retail price for generic drugs, the brief says.
The named plaintiffs said they have standing to sue on behalf of tens of thousands of J&J employees under the Third Circuit’s 2024 decision in Knudsen v. MetLife Group Inc. , arguing that the court there held that plaintiffs have Article III standing if their complaint alleges they have or will pay more in premiums or other out-of-pocket costs as a result of a defendant’s ERISA violations.
Read J&J Workers Reassert Drug Costs Resulted in Concrete Harm.