Wellbutrin Class Action Lawsuit Certification Denied

A federal judge has refused to grant certification for a Wellbutrin class action lawsuit filed on behalf of consumers who were allegedly forced to pay higher prices for the antidepressant due to GlaxoSmithKline’s attempts to keep a generic form of the medication off the market. 

The class action lawsuit over Wellbutrin was brought by the Health & Welfare Plan for the Sheet Metal Workers Local 441 in Mobile, Alabama, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. The plaintiffs sought class action status on behalf of all individual consumers and more than 20,000 third-parties, such as health care plans and insurers.

The lawsuit claimed that Glaxo was attempting to delay the release of generic Wellbutrin versions through frivolous patent lawsuits against generic drug makers. Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Lawrence F. Stengel declined to give the lawsuit class action status, saying that it would be impossible for plaintiffs to prove that the class members were financially injured by Glaxo’s actions.

Stengel determined that it would be impossible to determine which customers would have exhibited brand loyalty to GlaxoSmithKline, meaning that they would continue to buy brand-name Wellbutrin even after generic versions were released. Without being able to determine who would buy generic versions and who would not, the plaintiffs do not have a class action case, he ruled.

Wellbutrin (bupropion HCI), which is manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline, was first approved by FDA as an antidepressant in December 1985. The drug was pulled a year later due to the high number of seizures associated with Wellbutrin side effects, but it was reintroduced in 1989 after federal reviewers determined that the seizures were dose specific and lowered the daily dosage of the drug.

Wellbutrin has come under closer scrutiny recently after a study published in May in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology suggested that there may be an increased risk of heart birth defects from Wellbutrin when the medication is taken during pregnancy.

Researchers found that mothers who were given Wellbutrin in their first trimester had double the chance of giving birth to a child with a congenital heart problem than mothers who did not take the drug. However, they were not able to establish a cause-and-effect relationship between the drug and the birth defects.