Jim Gottstein, an attorney who was one of three people named as conspirators by a federal judge in the infamous Zyprexa document scandal earlier this year, will make a rare public appearance next Monday at Hampshire College, a private liberal arts school in western Massachusetts. Whether Jim will talk about this now-infamous episode isn’t clear; he’s still negotiating with Eli Lilly, which markets the antipsychotic, in a bid to avoid court sanctions. The sponsor says he will. In any event, here’s the flyer.

For those who don’t recall, Gottstein - who runs The Law Project for Psychiatric Rights, a non-profit against forced drugging; David Egilman, who was an expert witness for plaintiffs’ lawyers suing Lilly, and Alex Berenson, a reporter for The New York Times, were accused by US District Court Judge Jack Weinstein of violating a court order by scheming to publish sealed Zyprexa documents. The judge called the reporter ‘reprehensible,‘ but he wasn’t punished. Egilman recently settled for $100,000, but argued he didn’t admit to anything illegal. Here’s the order from last February.

The documents, which are still circulating on the Internet (on FuriousSeasons, for example), indicated Lilly downplayed or hid harmful Zyprexa side effects - weight gain and diabetes - and improperly promoted the antipsychotic to docs. The episode highighted drug safety, public health and First Amendment rights, and, as a result, attracted enormous attention from big pharma, plaintiffs’ lawyers, free-speech advocates and consumer groups over the societal benefit of disseminating the materials. Now, a growing number of states are filing lawsuits against Lilly for, essentially, overcharging for the med.

For those interested in attending, this will likely be a Lilly slugfest. “We are honored to have Jim speak locally to reinforce what we at the Freedom Center have been saying for years - it is not ok to force people on to psychiatric drugs and the dangerous side effects of these drugs need to be revealed to the public,” says Keely Malone of the Freedom Center, which is sponsoring the event, in the publicity material. Maybe Lilly will send someone to monitor Jim’s remarks.

Hat tip to Torts Prof Blog