A recent Law360 story by Brendan Pierson, “Plaintiffs’ Lawyers Seek $113M Fee in Glumetza Pay-For-Delay Case,” reports that lawyers for purchasers of the diabetes drug Glumetza have asked a judge to approve a fee award of about $113 million after securing more than $453 million from Bausch Health Companies Inc, Lupin Pharmaceuticals Inc and Assertio Therapeutics Inc to settle claims of anticompetitive practices related to the blockbuster drug.

The plaintiffs' firms - Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro, Hilliard Shadowen and Sperling & Slater - said in a motion filed in San Francisco federal court that the award reflected a "presumptively reasonable" 25% cut of the deal, and was supported by the large recovery and the substantial work they had done on the case.  Glumetza, an extended-release version of the widely used drug metformin, was first marketed in 2005 by Assertio, then called Depomed Inc, and Santarus Inc, which was later acquired by Bausch.

The purchasers claimed in their class action lawsuit that Depomed and Santarus in 2012 paid off Lupin, an Indian generic drugmaker, to delay launching a generic version of Glumetza until 2016 by agreeing to drop a patent lawsuit and provide other benefits.

The resulting monopoly allowed Bausch, then called Valeant Pharmaceuticals, to hike the drug's price in 2015 to $51 per tablet, from $5.72, they said.  In September, Bausch settled for $300 million, with Lupin for $150 million and Assertio for $3.85 million. The much smaller settlement with Assertio reflects the company's "precarious financial situation," according to the motion.