JACKSON, Miss. (Legal Newsline) - Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood announced on Monday that two more settlements with three pharmaceutical manufacturers have been reached in the ongoing cases related to average wholesale prices.

Settlements with Par Pharmacuetical Co., Alpharma USPD Inc., now known as Actavis Mid-Atlantic LLC, and Purepac Pharmaceutical Co., now known as Actavis Elizabeth LLC, will put $6,032,000 into the state's coffers. The money comes from recently settled cases in the AWP litigation involving allegations of consumer protection violations and Medicaid fraud. AWPs are the average price at which drugs are purchased at the wholesale level.

"Evidence has shown that some of these pharmaceutical manufacturers reported prices inflated as much as 1,200 percent over their actual costs," Hood said. "In our commitment to protecting the taxpayers of Mississippi, we are pleased to return millions of their hard-earned dollars to the state's coffers."

The settlements come on the heels of a verdict in September by Judge Thomas L. Zebert in favor of the state of Mississippi in another AWP case against pharmaceutical company Sandoz Inc.

Hood's office initiated the AWP litigation in 2004. His office previously settled with eight other companies, including Dey, Amgen/Immunex, Baxter/Boehringer/Roxanne, Abott, Myland, GlaxoSmithKline, Aventis and Schering/Schering-Plough/Warrick for a total of 10 formalized settlements with a net recovery to the state of approximately $45 million. There are 44 remaining defendants in the cases.