Mississippi Public Employees' Retirement System, Jackson, filed a securities class-action lawsuit against drug manufacturer Mylan and its senior executives, saying the company made materially false statements regarding the operations of one of the company's plants and participated in a scheme to deceive the market, leading to significant investment losses.
The $25.3 billion pension fund filed the lawsuit as a class action in U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh on June 26, related to a whistleblower complaint to the Food and Drug Administration in 2015 that the company had been manipulating drug test results and hiding those manipulations using methods such as intentionally crashing their testing computers to evade detection by the FDA, according to the court filing.
Investigations with the FDA regarding the operations of its plant in Morgantown, W.Va., revealed "poor quality control oversight, major lapses in equipment cleaning and ineffective controls," according to the filing and that Mylan's attempts to address the deficiencies were inadequate. After the company worked to restructure the plant in 2018, the company "reported a surprise loss for the first quarter of 2019," citing costs associated with the restructuring.
Mylan officials could not be immediately reached for comment; Shelley Powers, pension fund spokeswoman, referred questions to the Mississippi Attorney General's office, where officials could not be immediately reached for comment.
