Case Study: Global Pharmaceutical Company Leverages Cross-Functional Pharma and Antitrust Experience in Large Scale Government Investigation

Client need

Our client needed to respond to an FTC Civil Investigative Demand (CID) to review and produce a wide range of discovery related to allegations of Sherman Act, Robinson Patman Act, and FTC Act violations.

Client solution

• Considering the anticipated high volume and fast turnaround, Epiq was able to staff a team of 75+ review lawyers with antitrust and/or pharmaceutical experience.
• Epiq worked with outside counsel and the vendor to prioritize relevant and least likely privileged data to meet production deadline benchmarks.
• Epiq structured a Quality Control (QC) workflow to escalate relevant and key documents for outside counsel review on an expedited basis.
• Epiq implemented a production identification in coordination with outside counsel aimed at producing large volumes of low-risk documents quickly, allowing additional time for the Epiq QC and outside counsel’s second level review, expediting review and obtaining critical matter insights.

Why Epiq

Epiq has dedicated managed review practice groups in Global Investigations and Pharma, from which we leveraged the combined knowledge of anti-competitive issues and how they apply to pharmaceutical sales and pricing. Our team at every level, from review lawyers to review managers, came into the review with subject-matter experience related to drug pricing issues surrounding the relationship between manufacturers/ competitors, wholesalers, and Pharmacy Benefits Managers (PBMs) rebate negotiation.