A Connecticut federal judge ruled Mallinckrodt’s Irish unit can’t escape a state price-fixing suit after a five-year jurisdictional delay.
States sued the Irish entity of drugmaker Mallinckrodt over drug price-fixing. The Irish subsidiary eventually moved to dismiss, arguing the court lacked personal jurisdiction over it or that the original complaint had never been properly served. Both are threshold defenses, meant to be raised at the start of a case.
The judge denied the dismissal bid, finding the company raised those arguments more than five years after the complaint was filed. That delay forfeits the defenses. A defendant can’t sit through years of proceedings and then claim the court never had authority over it.
The ruling keeps the Irish entity in the suit. It’ll now have to defend the underlying price-fixing claims on the merits. The company’s Irish corporate structure won’t substitute for a timely procedural defense.
No trial date or next filing deadline was reported in the April 9 ruling.
James Okafor