On 9 July 2025, the Court of First Instance of Amsterdam (the Court) dismissed as inadmissible the action which the Pharmaceutical Accountability Foundation (“Stichting Farma ter Verantwoording” – PAF) had brought against several AbbVie affiliates (AbbVie) on account of the allegedly excessive prices which AbbVie charged for Humira® (active substance: adalimumab) in the Netherlands between 2004 and 2016 (see, attached judgment).

PAF is a not-for-profit organisation founded in 2018 with the stated objective to make sure that medicines and other medical technologies are made commercially available in a sustainable and socially responsible fashion.  PAF has had notable success in a separate competition law action against Leadiant for excessive pricing of a treatment for the genetic disease CTX, which resulted in the Dutch competition authority imposing fines of €17 million on Leadiant (see, Van Bael & Bellis Life Sciences News & Insights of 20 July 2021, 12 July 2023, and 18 February 2025).

For its part, AbbVie is a pharmaceutical firm which grew the Humira® franchise after acquiring Knoll Pharmaceuticals in 2001, which had discovered adalimumab and then taken the first steps to develop this medicine. In 2003, the European Medicines Agency authorised the first therapeutic indication of Humira® for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. The product has since become a therapeutic and commercial success and is now deployed for the treatment of a full range of auto-immune diseases. It has thus been described by both friend and foe as a Swiss army knife.

PAF sought from the Court a declaratory judgment that, in applying its prices for Humira®, AbbVie ignored several provisions of national and international law that protect social and human rights or require a person to behave in a socially acceptable fashion. Additionally, according to PAF, the declaratory judgment should also confirm that charging these prices amounted to an abuse of dominant position in breach of EU And Dutch competition law. PAF argued that AbbVie’s allegedly excessive prices not only generated inordinate profits for AbbVie but, crucially, hindered patient access and deprived the healthcare insurers of funds that could have been used for other healthcare services covered by the basic statutory health insurance. PAF alleged that this healthcare failure caused injury to many individuals in the form of absent or deferred healthcare and the associated loss of years of living in good health.

The Court’s dismissal of PAF’s action was based on Article 3:303 of the Dutch Civil Code which requires a plaintiff to have a sufficient interest in pursuing its action. According to the Court, PAF lacked such an interest because, in seeking a purely declaratory judgment on behalf of a group of insured individuals who had been denied basic statutorily defined healthcare, it would not create a benefit or a remedy for the supposedly represented persons. This is because the action did not seek any monetary compensation and any finding of a fault during a past period, which ended in 2016, and would not change any aspect of the terminated relationship between AbbVie and the represented individuals. Equally, PAF’s action did not aim to change AbbVie’s conduct in the future. Lastly, according to the Court, a declaratory judgment establishing the unlawfulness of AbbVie’s conduct – lacking any direct effect on PAF and its affiliated members – might at most have an indirect beneficial effect for health insurers and hospitals since they could then bring an action for damages. However, the Court considered such an indirect benefit insufficient to recognise an interest on the part of PAF pursuant to Article 3:303.

The Court summarised the problematic character of PAF’s action in the finding that PAF had been looking to obtain a general pronouncement by the Court that would have created a standard for future pricing behaviour with regard to patented medicines. According to the Court, pursuing such an objective is not in conformity with Article 3:303 of the Dutch Civil Code and falls outside the scope of a civil procedure.

The Court’s decision to dismiss the case on procedural grounds will be surprising to some following an earlier judgment in this case in which the Court established jurisdiction over two AbbVie affiliates and declared to be competent to rule on a collective action based on the rules governing mass damages. However, it ultimately refrained from taking further steps and usefully clarified that declaratory judgments in the Netherlands must have an effect on the legal relationship between the parties, and do not serve the purpose of achieving a presumed general social objective. The judgment should thus be welcomed because it stands for the proposition that courts should be called on to resolve concrete disputes between parties, including mass claims, but not to legislate and make policy.

In a reaction to the judgment, PAF indicated that it was considering filing an appeal. It has until early October 2025 to make up its mind.