City of Springfield sues major pharmaceutical companies

Last edited 7:22 a.m., Jan. 22, 2026 [Editor's note: A statement from Eli Lilly has been added.]

The city of Springfield has joined a growing list of parties that have filed suit against major pharmaceutical companies over an alleged price-fixing scheme for diabetes medications such as insulin.

The Springfield municipality's 184-page lawsuit was filed Jan. 13 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri’s Southern Division in Springfield. The defendants include manufacturers Eli Lilly and Co., Sanofi and Novo Nordisk, as well as pharmacy benefit managers CVS Caremark, Express Scripts and OptumRx.

Similar lawsuits have been filed by Springfield-based auto parts retailer O'Reilly Automotive Inc. (Nasdaq: ORLY) and Bolivar-based Ozarks Schools Benefits Association. 

In its suit, the city of Springfield seeks damages and demands a jury trial in alleging that Eli Lilly and the other defendants are guilty on counts of common law fraud, unjust enrichment and civil conspiracy.

The city of Springfield, which operated self-insured health plans that paid for the at-issue diabetes medications from at least 2003 to the present, alleges in the lawsuit that manufacturers and PBMs conspired together to artificially raise the price of diabetes medications.

"The cost of diabetes medications has skyrocketed over the past 20 years. Over that time, while the average cost of consumer goods and services has risen 1.75-fold, the cost of some diabetes medications has risen more than tenfold," the lawsuit reads. "These price increases do not derive from the rising cost of goods, production costs, investment in research and development or competitive market forces. Instead, defendants engineered them to exponentially increase their profits at the expense of payors like plaintiff."

In December, Sanofi announced in a news release that it had reached an agreement with the Trump administration to lower medicine costs, including a provision to "offer patients direct access to certain medicines including insulins at substantial discounts through TrumpRx.gov and other direct-to-patient platforms."