Henry Schein Inc., a distributor of health care products to medical doctors, dentists and veterinarians, settled last week an anti-trust lawsuit brought by SourceOne Dental Inc., an online marketplace that lets dental professionals buy equipment and supplies from hundreds of manufacturers and distributors.

SourceOne Dental filed the suit in September 2015, alleging that Henry Schein and two other large medical distributors, Patterson Companies Inc. and Benco Dental Supply Co., colluded to undermine new suppliers who were set up through e-commerce and other channels to potentially offer lower prices, according to Law360, a unit of LexisNexis, a publisher of legal and regulatory information for corporations, law firms, government agencies and academic institutions. SourceOne advertises on its home page that it offers “Free shipping on everything. Always.”

The suit, brought in  United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, alleges that the big distributors had engaged in a scheme to pressure manufacturers and state dental associations not to conduct business with or endorse SourceOne and other distributors. It further alleges that, in pressuring these groups, Henry Schein, Patterson and Benco had threatened to boycott dental association trade shows and to refuse to carry products from manufacturers.

Henry Schein denied any wrongdoing in a statement it released last week regarding the settlement. It said the settlement would result in a $0.04 per share charge when the company reports its second-quarter 2017 financial results, but didn’t provide further settlement details. Based on Henry Schein’s 79.47 million shares outstanding on April 1, the end of its first quarter, the settlement’s value would come in at $3.18 million. Benco and Patterson did not immediately return requests for comment on the case. A spokesman for Boise Schiller Flexner, the New York-based law firm representing SourceOne Dental, said the law firm had no comment about the settlement.

Several other similar lawsuits have been filed by groups of dentists against Henry Schein, Patterson and Benco, according to Law360. The suits followed a $300,000 settlement announced last year by Benco in an anti-trust case brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Henry Schein, Patterson and Benco each operate extensive e-commerce operations in addition to selling through sales reps. Henry Schein, which operates in 32 countries, sells more than 260,000 products, including e-commerce and practice management software applications, through a network of more than 3,700 field sales reps and more than 1800 telesales reps, plus a network of 199 sales and service centers.

This summer, it plans to launch a redesigned e-commerce site at HenrySchein.com with new features designed to make it easier and faster for medical professionals to find and order products via mobile devices as well as desktops.

Henry Schein, which doesn’t break out e-commerce sales, reported net sales of $11.57 billion for the year ended Dec. 31, 2016.

For the first quarter ended April 1, 2017, the most recent period for which it has revealed financial figures, Henry Schein reported:

• Net sales of $2.92 billion, up 7.7% from $2.71 billion a year earlier’
• Gross profit of $822.92 million, up 5.8% from $777.84 million;
• Net income of $150.25 million, up 20.7% from $124.53 million

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