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One of the bellwether price gouging cases from the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic was recently reversed and remanded by New York’s First Judicial Department of the Appellate Division.  

New York Attorney General Letitia James announced in May 2020 that her office had filed a lawsuit against a wholesale grocery distributor – Quality King Distributors – and its CEO for price gouging. The lawsuit alleged that between January 2020 and April 2020, Quality King raised the price of Lysol when its costs had not increased, “dramatically boost[ing] its gross profit margins for Lysol Spray, almost quintupling them over its pre-crisis margins.” Quality King sold 46,104 cans of Lysol during the time in question, and “each time one of these [] cans of Lysol was sold at retail for an inflated price – and each time a person bought any other Lysol product whose price Quality King had inflated – Quality King’s price-gouging caused injury to a consumer,” the lawsuit stated. The Attorney General seeks, among other relief, disgorgement of all profits from the illegal practice and a civil penalty of $25,000.

New York State Attorney General Letitia James has filed a petition to compel Tyson Foods to comply with a subpoena in connection with ongoing price gouging investigations by the state.  New York’s price gouging statute imposes civil penalties on sellers of essential goods charging unconscionably excessive prices during an abnormal disruption of the market.  The subpoena requests information relating to prices, dates of sale, purchasers, costs, and profit margin for Tyson’s meat products sold in New York from December 1, 2019 through April 2022.

On July 11, 2022, the United States District Court for the District of Kansas approved a $264 million settlement against Mylan and certain of its subsidiaries in the case In Re EpiPen (Epinephrine Injection, USP) Marketing, Sales Practices, and Antitrust Litigation in a matter broadly tagged as price-gouging litigation. Plaintiffs filed class action lawsuits against Mylan, the owner of EpiPen, and Pfizer, Inc., a manufacturer and seller of EpiPen, alleging, “anticompetitive conduct including, among other things: engaging in a ‘hard switch’ and selling EpiPens only in packs of two; entering into discount agreements with schools that were conditioned on the schools not purchasing competing products; securing multiple overlapping patents on minor changes to the EpiPen and engaging in ‘sham’ patent litigation to forestall generic competition; and paying excessive rebates to commercial insurance companies, pharmaceutical benefits managers, and state-based Medicaid agencies conditioned on those companies and agencies not reimbursing the use of competing products.” The plaintiffs claimed that the defendants broke various state antitrust laws and the federal civil RICO statute. The suits, filed in the Northern District of Illinois, the District of Kansas, the District of New Jersey, and the Western District of Washington, were joined in August of 2017 in the District of Kansas.

Lawmakers in Washington, D.C., and California have taken recent steps to further protect the infant formula market from price gouging. On June 7, 2022, the D.C. Council passed the “Infant Formula Consumer Protection Emergency Act.” The Act, which will remain in effect for 90 days, targets companies selling baby formula at extremely high prices. The Act provides that companies may be subject to a $5,000 fine, for first-time offenses, or a $10,000 fine, for subsequent offenses, if they sell infant formula at a price greater than 20% of what they previously sold substantially similar formula in the District over the 90-day period prior to February 17, 2022. If the retailer never sold a substantially similar formula product in that 90-day period, they would face fines if they sell infant formula at a price greater than 20% of the average price of substantially similar infant formula product from substantially similar retailers.

On May 24, 2022, the FTC announced a widespread inquiry into the ongoing infant formula shortage. The agency had been tasked by the White House with investigating any price gouging or unfair market practices in the industry. The agency is seeking public comments on “various factors that may have contributed to the infant formula shortage…as well as its impact on families and retailers.”

On June 3, 2020, Proskauer’s Antitrust Group hosted a webinar on what supply chain businesses should know about price gouging laws and regulations, and, during and after the webinar, we fielded some thoughtful follow-up questions from clients and friends who attended. We have collected and provided answers to the questions we received below in an effort to further inform and share insights on price gouging concerns raised by attendees. Thank you to all who joined us for the webinar.

States around the country have activated their price gouging statutes due to the COVID 19 pandemic.  These temporary restrictions typically go into effect upon the declaration of a local, state or national emergency.  However, even though all the emergency declaration began at roughly the same time (the first week of March 2020), they likely will end at very different times. States are taking much different approaches to their predicted end-dates for their price gouging restrictions.