USA - Nevada. Alvogen, Inc. sued the state Department of Corrections

July 11, 2018

Nevada

Saying Nevada had obtained a supply of the drug-maker's sedative midazolom “by subterfuge,” Alvogen, Inc., a multibillion-dollar generic drug company, sued Nevada and the state Department of Corrections on July 10 to prevent the state from using its drugs in any execution. The lawsuit alleged that Nevada “intentionally defrauded Alvogen’s distributor” by concealing its intention to use Alvogen’s medicine in Dozier‘s execution and by “implicitly making the false representation that they had legitimate therapeutic rationale” for buying the drug. Alvogen's lawyers said that the company also had sent a letter in April to the governors, attorneys general, and prison directors of all of the death-penalty states in the U.S. expressing “in the clearest possible terms that Alvogen strongly objects to use of its products in capital punishment.” After Nevada's supply of another drug expired and it decided to switch to midazolam, prison officials bought the drug from pharmaceutical distributor Cardinal Health without disclosing its intended purpose. Alvogen said Nevada officials directed Cardinal Health to ship the drug to a state office more than 200 miles from the state prison “to further the implication that the midazolam was for a legitimate medical purpose.”