On April 25, the UK Restrictive Practices Court resumed its hearing ofthe case brought by the UK Director General of Fair Trading seeking to abolish Resale Price Maintenance on over-the-counter medicines, the last existing price-fixing agreement in the UK (Marketletter October 16, 2000).
The case originally opened on October 2, 2000, but was suspended in November following the removal of one of one of the Court lay members, who admitted conflicts of interest, due to concern about potential for bias.
Just before the case resumed, supermarket giant ASDA accused OTC drug manufacturers of taking advantage of the unexpected six-month delay in proceedings to "hike the price of everyday branded health care items by up to 3.5 times the rate of inflation." The retailer, which is owned by Wal-Mart of the USA, went on to claim that the prices of retailers' own-label versions of these products had remained the same or had even been reduced, claiming that most of these were at least half the price of the equivalent brands.
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