A 2010 penalty against Boehringer Ingelheim ranked it among the drug companies that paid the stiffest fines nationally over an 18-month stretch.
Boehringer Ingelheim paid $281 million between November 2010 and this past July, the period studied by the advocacy group Public Citizen, primarily to settle a case in late 2010 in which its Roxane subsidiary was accused of overcharging government health programs.
Boehringer Ingelheim has its U.S. headquarters in Ridgefield and is among Fairfield County’s largest employers.
GlaxoSmithKline topped the Public Citizen list with fines totaling nearly $3.1 billion; combined with Johnson & Johnson and Abbott, the trio accounted for two-thirds of the total penalties absorbed by the total industry.
Stamford-based Purdue Pharma ranked among the 15 drug companies paying the largest penalties since 1991, the result of its $635 million OxyContin settlement of 2007.
Since that year, Connecticut has collected $31.5 million in financial penalties from the pharmaceutical industry, Public Citizen reported, mostly as a participant in multi-state settlements.
