As controversy surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic gets dredged up again following a wave of renewed governmental scrutiny, Kansas is aiming to hold Pfizer’s feet to the fire with a lawsuit alleging false representations of the company’s COVID vaccine.
In his complaint (PDF), Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach accuses the Comirnaty maker of violating the state’s Consumer Protection Act by “misrepresenting” the safety and efficacy of its vaccine and reaping the rewards with billions of dollars in revenue tied to its sales.
More specifically, Kobach levies accusations that the company hid knowledge of series adverse events, a waning effectiveness over time and across virus variants and an uncertainty over the vaccine’s ability to prevent COVID transmission, all of which violate previous consent judgments with the state.
The 179-page civil suit points out several instances in which Pfizer allegedly hid safety information, including the vaccine’s risks in pregnant women and a potential link to myocarditis and pericarditis, as well as strokes and death. It also accuses the drugmaker of censoring critiques on social media through its campaigns and partnerships to dispel misinformation.
Kansas seeks civil penalties and unspecified damages tied to alleged violations of multiple consent judgments reached through previous multi-state litigation on other drugs. The settlements all stipulate that “Pfizer shall not make any written or oral claim that is false, misleading or deceptive regarding any FDA-approved Pfizer product.”
The company did not immediately respond to Fierce Pharma’s request for comment.
Before filing the suit, Kobach’s office attempted to wrangle confidential documents, data and internal Pfizer communications in a notice of consent judgment violations. In response, the company’s attorneys at DLA Piper sent over a written response calling the request for documents “premature” and denying the allegations “in the strongest possible terms.”
For one, Pfizer’s lawyers pointed to data showing that the overall risk of myocarditis is “substantially higher” immediately after contracting the COVID virus than it is in the weeks following vaccination, meaning “the risk of myocarditis from being infected by COVID-19 is far greater than the risk of myocarditis from receiving the vaccine.”
The Kansas litigation follows a similar complaint from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in 2023. That earlier lawsuit also accused the drugmaker of misrepresenting the effectiveness of its vaccine and attempting to censor public discussion in acts that would step on the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act.
Earlier this year, Pfizer requested that litigation be moved into the federal courts because its work was on behalf of the federal government. The two are still going back and forth, with Paxton in April urging a federal judge to keep Pfizer on the hook.