Chairman of Lasco Affiliated Companies, Lascelles Chin, says that an injunction granted to global pharmaceutical giant, Pfizer, by the local Supreme Court in 2005 cost his company a 500 per cent growth projection.

“The injunction did really significant damage to Lasco. We would have been 500 per cent bigger now,” he told judge Viviene Harris, under questioning from Pfizer’s local defence lawyer, Denise Kitson.

Chin was substantiating his company’s claim for US$311 million in compensation for loss of sales of the hypertension generic drug — Las Amlodipine — while the case lasted in the Jamaican court up to 2012, when the appeal court upheld the Supreme Court’s dismissal of Pfizer’s patent claim and removed the injunction.

Chin said that he was also concerned that during the period poor Jamaicans were forced to purchase Pfizer’s much more expensive Norvasc or do without the drug, in a situation where some 800,000 Jamaicans, or 40 per cent of the population, were suffering from hypertension (blood pressure).

The prominent investor who was honoured by American Friends of Jamaica (AFJ) in April for making generic drugs available to more Jamaicans at affordable prices, noted that at the time the issue arose his company was selling an Amlodipine pill for $15-20, while Pfizer’s Norvasc was selling for $120.

“So the damage was not to Lasco alone, but also the poor people who couldn’t afford it (during the injunction),” Chin said.

Lasco and Medimpex import and distribute hypertension generic drugs Las Amlodipine and Normodipine, respectively, both of which contain amlodipine besylate and are sold well below the cost of similar drugs exported to Jamaica by Pfizer

In March 2005, Pfizer took the matter to the Jamaican Supreme Court, claiming ownership of an Egyptian patent for the amlodipine besylate used in both drugs which were competing with its Norvasc. In 2009, the Supreme Court found, however, that the Egyptian patent expired on March 31 1997 and that a Jamaican patent was also useless and therefore, there was no need for the two local firms to be licensed to distribute their pills.

Pfizer appealed, but the Jamaican appeal court upheld the Supreme Court’s decision in 2012. Pfizer then appealed to the Privy Council in London which also agreed with the Jamaican courts in November, 2015.

However, the Privy Council referred the parties back to the Jamaican courts to settle the issue of the seven-year loss of sale suffered by Lasco and Medimpex because of the injunction. The hearings began at the Supreme Court in downtown Kingston on Monday.

The case continues this morning.