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 Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh confirmed on Thursday that his
office filed a lawsuit in state court after Insys resisted turning
over documents sought as part of an investigation into the
drugmaker's role in the opioid epidemic.
Frosh said the state had been investigating the Chandler,
Arizona-based company since 2016 amid allegations that Insys had
marketed its product Subsys to not just patients with severe cancer
pain but for other conditions.
The lawsuit, filed on Monday, called Insys's resistance to turning
over all of the documents the state sought "troubling" given its
claims that its conduct had changed.
"Usually the reason people fight disclosures is that they don't want
the people seeking disclosures to know what they've been up to,"
Frosh said in an interview.
Insys did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It has
said that it has taken steps to prevent past mistakes from happening
again and has said that Subsys made up 0.02 percent of opioid
prescriptions in 2016.
Insys has found itself at the center of several lawsuits and
investigations focused on Subsys, an under-the-tongue spray intended
for cancer patients that contains fentanyl, a synthetic opioid.
Federal prosecutors in Boston have accused seven former executives
and managers at Insys including billionaire founder John Kapoor of
participating in a scheme to bribe doctors to prescribe Subsys and
to defraud insurers.
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According to prosecutors, beginning in 2012, Kapoor, former Insys
Chief Executive Michael Babich and others engaged in a scheme to
bribe medical practitioners by paying them to participate in sham
speaker program events.
Prosecutors have sought to link the case to the national opioid
abuse epidemic. Opioids were involved in over 42,000 overdose deaths
in 2016, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention.
Kapoor, Babich and their co-defendants have pleaded not guilty.
Insys has said it may have to pay at minimum $150 million as part of
a settlement with the U.S. Justice Department. It already agreed to
pay $9.45 million in settlements with four state attorneys general
and faces lawsuits by five others.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Leslie Adler and
Lisa Shumaker)
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