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Law360 (October 19, 2020, 4:41 PM EDT) -- A nonprofit is suing the Trump administration for withholding details about billion-dollar contracts with Moderna, Regeneron and other pharmaceutical giants for COVID-19 vaccine development and manufacturing.
Knowledge Ecology International, an organization that advocates for access to medical technologies, sued the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Department of the Army on Friday in D.C. federal court seeking information about multiple vaccine contracts.
Records that HHS and the U.S. Department of Defense provided in response to Freedom of Information Act requests about the Genentech, Regeneron and Moderna contracts, and parts of the Sanofi and Janssen vaccine contracts, were filled with unlawful redactions, Knowledge Ecology International said. As a result, details about the scope of the contracts, cost sharing and management of the contract rights were missing.
"Information redacted under Exemption 4 in the responsive records includes information that Moderna is contractually obligated to publicly disclose," the organization said in the complaint, referring to a FOIA exemption that lets agencies keep trade secrets confidential.
But Knowledge Ecology International said it believes the redacted sections "are not trade secrets or confidential information" protected under the exemption.
The nonprofit also accused HHS of failing to properly respond to FOIA requests for information about the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority's contracts with Pfizer regarding the development of a COVID-19 vaccine and a $472 million amended contract with Moderna for its vaccine candidate.
The Army also ignored requests for information about its contracts with various companies, including a $1.5 billion contract with Moderna for 100 million doses of a vaccine, the complaint said.
"We are keen to see how the government is protecting the public's rights, and enabling or blocking competitive supply of drugs or vaccines," Knowledge Ecology International Director James Love said Monday.
The nonprofit has taken the Trump administration to court over its vaccine campaign multiple times already. It sued the government on Oct. 9 seeking information about the National Institutes of Health's contributions to Gilead Sciences Inc.'s antiviral drug remdesivir and other grants and contracts.
Consumer advocacy group Public Citizen filed a suit last week accusing the government of ignoring its requests for information about various vaccine contracts.
Lawmakers have also been probing Operation Warp Speed — the official name of the Trump administration's COVID-19 vaccine development initiative — for possible conflicts of interest. Democrats on the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis have maintained that the process for choosing vaccine candidates has not been transparent and that "the reasons for selecting or rejecting particular candidates" were not made public.
Representatives for the government did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Knowledge Ecology International is represented in-house by Kathryn Ardizzone and by Lynne Bernabei of Bernabei & Kabat PLLC.
Counsel information for the government was not immediately available.
The case is Knowledge Ecology International v. U.S. Department of Health et al., case number 1:20-cv-02986, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
--Additional reporting by Hailey Konnath, Adam Lidgett and Alyssa Aquino. Editing by Daniel King.
For a reprint of this article, please contact reprints@law360.com.
