In a letter e-mailed today to Lilly ceo Sid Taurel, US Sen. Chuck Grassley, who sits on the Senate Finance Committee, asks for “all documents and materials, including, but not limited to, emails, letters, reports, and memoranda, that were made available to the court-appointed” lawyers on the plaintiffs’ steering committees in the Zyprexa product-liability litigation.

Grassley is, of course, referring to numerous documents that were leaked last December and published in The New York Times. The episode caused a federal judge to admonish the journalist, along with an expert witness involved in the litigation and a lawyer not involved in the lawsuits for allegedly conspiring to violate his protective order ensuring confidentiality.

In his letter to Taurel, Grassley writes that he sought the material from the expert witness, David Egilman, on Dec. 20, but only received an order indicating Egilman had to return the documents. Lilly was steamed the documents became public. At that point, Grassley, writes Taurel that, “although no one affiliated with the Committee was a party to that dispute, I decided to suspend efforts to obtain the relevant documents until that dispute was resolved.”

Well, the dispute was largely resolved - US District Court Judge Jack Weinstein ordered some people who received the documents to return them, but there were exceptions, including several web sites and Emilia DiSanto, a member of the Senate Finance Committee staff who has worked for several years investigating drugmakers.

So what exactly happened? Most assuredly, the committee staff took a close look at those documents back in December, but Chuck is curious to see what else Sid’s team coughs up. And that should result in an interesting hearing.

Update: Grassley says DiSanto never received the documents, although sources say they were sent to her. You can read Weinstein’s ruling below.

Weinstein’s Feb. 13 order; see page 73.

[tags]Chuck Grassley, David Egilman, Eli Lilly, Zyprexa[/tags]