On Friday, a U.S. judge refused to dismiss a $6.4 billion claim against Bristol-Myers Squibb Co (BMY.N).The claim said that Bristol Myers Squibb put off selling its Breyanzi disease drug to avoid making payments to investors of the old Celgene Corp, which it bought for $80.3 billion in 2019.
U.S. Region Judge Jesse Furman in Manhattan threw out Bristol Myers’s claim that UMB Bank NA, the legal administrator for the old Celgene investors, never gave the company the right information about its supposed failure to meet its consolidation commitments.
Bristol Myers and its lawyers did not respond quickly enough to requests for information.
The case started when the organisation agreed to pay Celgene investors with “contingent worth privileges” an extra $9 per share in real money if it got U.S. approval for Breyanzi and two other Celgene drugs by setting cutoff times.
Two of the drugs were approved by the deadlines, but UMB said the New York-based company didn’t make the required “constant efforts” to get Breyanzi approved by Dec. 31, 2020, and got a “bonus” by not having to pay the extra money.
The legal administrator said that Bristol Myers had put off sending basic information to the United States. The Food and Drug Administration didn’t get its manufacturing plants ready for tests.
Bristol said that the claim should be dropped because it was no longer willing to pay the Celgene investors.
But the person in charge said that the agreement made it clear that UMB could sue and that Bristol Myers wasn’t exempt from material leaks that happened before the agreement ended.
“(Bristol Myers) says that he has no power to help the recommendation that a violation of an agreement can’t “proceed” after the end of the agreement as a matter of law,” Furman wrote.
David Elsberg, a lawyer for UMB, said that the legal administrator was “charmed” and was looking forward to proving its case.
On February 5, 2021, the FDA said that Breyanzi could be used to treat non-lymphoma. Hodgkin’s It is made of a chemical called lisocabtagene maraleucel.
The case is called UMB Bank NA v. Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. No. 21-04897, District Court for the Southern District of New York.