Hawaiʻi will receive $700 million under a settlement with two major pharmaceutical companies that failed to properly label a blood thinner known to pose risks to non-Caucasian patients. 

Gov. Josh Green said he expects the money to be used for a variety of health and human services programs, subject to approval by the Legislature.

The money comes at a key time, Green said, as the federal government has threatened funding cuts to states just as bills from the legislative session are crossing his desk for his signature.

The settlement, he said, “Positions us very well to weather the storm.”

The agreement follows a more than decade-long effort by a series of attorneys general starting with David Louie, who launched the litigation in 2014 against the drugmakers Bristol-Myers Squibb Company and three U.S. subsidiaries of the French company Sanofi.

In May 2024, Hawaiʻi First Circuit Court Judge James Ashford found that the drug companies knew that about 30% of patients, including Asians and Pacific Islanders, might have a diminished response to the heart drug Plavix yet failed to update their labels. That left doctors without the information needed to treat heart patients, Ashford found.

He awarded the state $458 million from Bristol-Myers Squibb and $458 million from the Sanofi subsidiaries, for a total of approximately $916 million. Although the companies could have appealed, Attorney General Anne Lopez’s team, which included Special Deputy Attorney General Rick Fried, of the Honolulu law firm Cronin, Fried, Sekiya, Kekina, and Fairbanks, instead persevered and reached the $700 million settlement.

During a news conference Friday, Lopez thanked Fried and the long line of attorneys general who stuck with the case. Without their persistence, she said, “we wouldn’t be here where we are today.”

Money To Be Used For Health And Welfare Programs

Green said the state expects to receive the full settlement amount by June 9. He said he has already spoken to legislative leaders to begin determining how to spend the money. 

The governor said he expects to use settlement proceeds for programs providing housing, school lunches, medical care and food and childcare for those in need. But he said his administration “will be collaborative with the Legislature.”

Lopez said she hopes the settlement makes it clear that her office “will be relentless in enforcing consumer protection laws.” 

Lopez has been engaged in 16 of the more than 220 lawsuits filed by states in response to executive orders issued by President Donald Trump since he took office in January. The White House orders in the first months of Trump’s second term are intended to reconfigure the role of the federal government across areas that include education, health, labor and the environment.