Thanks to a contract manufacturing deal with Takeda gone awry, AbbVie appears to be in line to receive hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.
The Delaware Court of Chancery sided with AbbVie Tuesday, granting the drugmaker nearly all of the $480.6 million it was seeking in damages from Takeda over a botched supply agreement for Lupron, according to Bloomberg Law.
Takeda had been pushing for damages of just $295 million, the publication added.
Lupron is used to treat certain patients with endometriosis, uterine fibroids, advanced prostate cancer and central precocious puberty, according to an AbbVie website.
AbbVie brought its suit against Takeda in November 2020, alleging the Japanese pharma breached its Lupron supply agreement after manufacturing issues at a Takeda production plant in Japan led to a shortage of AbbVie’s drug.
In September 2021, Delaware Court's Vice Chancellor Sam Glasscock III found that Takeda was guilty of breaching its contract. The court held a trial in January to determine the amount of damages AbbVie had suffered.
In a new ruling, Glasscock found that AbbVie’s damages methodology was “reliable and appropriate.” He did order some "adjustments" to the methodology, so the exact amount of damages set to be paid is not yet known.
AbbVie's damages model works on the “central premise” that the Lupron shortage caused customers to jump to competitor’s products, costing AbbVie sales and potentially permanently eroding Lupron’s share of the market, Glasscock wrote.
Takeda, for its part, challenged AbbVie’s model on two grounds: AbbVie’s purported data manipulation and the overall methodology used to estimate damages.
Takeda declined to comment on pending litigation, while AbbVie did not immediately respond to Fierce Pharma’s request for comment.