SAN FRANCISCO—Opening a new front in an escalating battle over alleged price fixing by major contact lens manufacturers, Costco Wholesale Corp. has filed an anti-trust lawsuit in a California federal court against Johnson & Johnson Vision Care, Inc. (JJVCI). The suit, filed March 2 in U.S. District Court of the Northern District of California, was revealed in a quarterly reported filed by Johnson & Johnson with the Securities and Exchange Commission on May 1.

In its complaint, Costco said “Many retailers and their agents—including trade associations, ECP buying groups, and distributors—have engaged in concerted action to restrain competition by restricting other retail competitors and by imposing minimum retail price or resale price maintenance policies (“RPM”). Such efforts resulted in an illegal conspiracy that was challenged in actions filed by numerous states, including California and New York, and which were resolved in 2001. The consent decree settling that dispute has expired, and J&J and J&J’s retailers and distributors have once again acted together to impose minimum retail prices and to increase prices to consumers, without any corresponding benefit to consumers.”

Costco’s complaint also alleges that J&J’s RPM policies “increased incentives for prescription choices by ECPs to be influenced by profit considerations that threaten patient care.” Costco is seeking an injunction and monetary damages. J&J has filed a motion to dismiss the suit.

The Costco suit follows a move, reported in VMail last month, in which Costco and 1-800 Contacts sided with the state of Utah in its passage of the “Contact Lens Consumer Protection Act” that was signed into law on March 27, 2015, by Utah Governor Gary Herbert in response to the major contact lens manufacturers instituting Unilateral Pricing Policy (UPP) programs over the past two years. The law is scheduled to go into effect on May 12, 2015, but Johnson & Johnson Vision Care, Alcon and Bausch + Lomb filed lawsuits April 14, 2015, to stop that state’s attorney general from enforcing the new law, as reported by VMail.

Responding to the move by Costco and 1-800 Contacts, a J&J spokesperson told VMail on April 15 that the UPP “lowers prices for Acuvue brand consumers and gets rid of complicated and seldom-redeemed rebates.”

According to J&J’s SEC filing, “In March and April 2015, over 30 putative class action complaints were filed by contact lens patients in a number of courts around the United States against JJVCI, other contact lens manufacturers, distributors and retailers, alleging vertical and horizontal conspiracies to fix the retail prices of contact lenses. The complaints alleged that the manufacturers reached agreements between each other and certain distributors and retailers concerning the prices at which some contact lenses could be sold to consumers. The plaintiffs are seeking damages. Motions to consolidate the cases are pending.”