Indivior PLC (LSE:INDV, NASDAQ:INDV) has won a case in the High Court against it and former parent Reckitt Benckiser Group PLC (LSE:RKT, ETR:3RB) after being hit by a lawsuit over the Suboxone branded opioid addiction drug.
In September, Wirral Council filed a claim that Indivior had made misleading or dishonest statements regarding an alleged fraudulent scheme to the market for its Suboxone products in published information relating, violating the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000.
The lawsuit was the first attempt by claimants to use representative proceedings for securities claims brought under Sections 90, 90A, and Schedule 10 of the act.
Idivior and RB applied to strike out the proposed representative proceedings, which if they had been allowed, would permit a representative acting on behalf of unnamed claimants to attempt to prove a violation of law without proof of damages, which is contrast to ordinary multi-party proceedings, which require proof of liability and damages for each claimant.
The High Court issued the judgment today, finding it "would be unfair and unjust, and contrary to the overriding objective, to allow the representative proceedings to oust the jurisdiction of the court to case manage the claims from the start."
Wirral and other claimants have filed a separate multi-party action alleging the same claims and these may only proceed in those multi-party proceedings brought by the claimants named in those proceedings.