Walgreen’s, Kroger’s Drug Pricing Claims Against J&J Revived (2)

Walgreen Co. and Kroger Co. can sue Johnson & Johnson and Janssen Biotech Inc. for allegedly inflating prices for the biologic Remicade, despite an anti-assignment provision in a contract between wholesale drug distributors and the drugmakers, the Third Circuit said Friday.

Antitrust claims “are a product of federal statute and thus are extrinsic to, and not rights ‘under,’ a commercial agreement,” the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit said in reversing summary judgment for the drugmakers.

J&J and Janssen thus couldn’t get out of the suit by claiming the right to sue belongs solely to the distributors, who ...