Attorney General's News Release

December 19, 1996

Nixon alleges boycott conspiracy in contact lens industry

Jefferson City, Mo. — Attorney General Jay Nixon announced today that a group of 22 states, including Missouri, has filed an antitrust lawsuit in federal court against three major contact lens manufacturers, eight optometric associations and eight individual optometrists, alleging they conspired to limit the availability of replacement contact lenses through retail businesses other than optometrists.

The lawsuit alleges that a conspiracy existed between optometrists, both individually and through their professional associations, and contact lens makers Bausch & Lomb, CIBA Vision Corp. and Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Vistakon. The professional associations named in the suit include the St. Louis-based American Optometric Association.

The defendants allegedly conspired to restrain consumer access to prescriptions or work orders needed to obtain replacement contact lenses and also conspired to eliminate the supply of replacement lenses to mail order companies, pharmacies, buying clubs, department stores, mass merchandise outlets and other alternative channels of distribution.

The result of this restraint, Nixon said, was a more limited availabity of replacement contact lenses at a higher cost to consumers. He said the restraint violated state and federal antitrust laws and state consumer laws.

“Certainly the original fitting of contact lenses should be done by an eye professional, but consumers should be able to buy replacement lenses wherever they want,” Nixon said. “It is unfair for optometrists and manufacturers to agree among themselves to deprive consumers of this choice. Consumers want and deserve convenience and the lowest prices available for replacement lenses.”

Nixon said that while state law licenses only optometrists, ophthalmologists and opticians to write prescriptions or work orders for corrective lenses, consumers are free to purchase replacement lenses from other sources. The introduction of disposable lenses in recent years created a greater demand for contact lenses, Nixon said, leading to increased competition in selling contact lenses from alternative channels of distribution that offered lower prices.

Missouri and the other states are alleging that the defendants made a concerted effort to keep lenses from being sold by anyone other than a licensed eye care practitioner. The optometrists allegedly used their collective leverage through professional associations to pressure manufacturers to supply contact lenses only to eye care practitioners.

According to the lawsuit, the manufacturers developed almost identical policies against selling to mail order companies, pharmacies and similar outlets and began to increase the enforcement of those policies in response to demands by optometrists.

By eliminating those cheaper sources for lenses or by increasing the costs for alternative distributors, the optometrists would be free from competition from those sources, Nixon said. This practice keeps the price of replacement contact lenses artificially high, the lawsuit alleges.

“In the past decade, disposable replacement lenses have become very easy and inexpensive to produce,” Nixon said. “The collusion between manufacturers and optometrists to keep the price artificially high has meant that consumers have not benefited as greatly as they should have.”

The states also claim that optometrists shared ideas on how to keep patients from obtaining their prescriptions for contact lenses. They would either refuse to release the lenses or put limits and conditions on the release so that it could not be used to obtain lenses from other sources.

The states are asking the federal court in New York to find that the defendants have violated state and federal antitrust laws by their actions and enjoin the defendant from future violations of the law. The lawsuit also asks the court to award an appropriate monetary judgment and court costs.

The other states besides Missouri that are participating in the lawsuit are Arizona, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

Inquiries from consumers should be directed to consumer@ago.mo.gov or 1-800-392-8222 (from within Missouri) or 573-751-3321 (outside Missouri).

All media inquiries should be directed to Press Secretary John Fougere.

E-mail      Phone: 573-751-8844         Fax: 573-751-5818