The ongoing dispute between the whistleblower and the drugmaker took yet another personal turn when Pfizer sought to force Rost to turn over info about his efforts to find another job after he was fired in 2005. But in a ruling late last week, US District Court Judge Gabriel Gorenstein decided Pfizer failed to show that the info sought from Rost was relevant.

Rost, you may recall, is a former Pfizer marketing vp who accused the drugmaker and its Pharmacia unit of off-label marketing for the Genotropin human growth hormone. And in a lawsuit in which he charges Pfizer with retaliation, Rost says he can’t find a comparable job and his calculates his economic losses since 2005 at more than $9 million, according to court documents.

Pfizer wanted to know whether Rost fulfilled his duty to “mitigate his damages” by making adequate efforts to look for work after he was fired. Pfizer sought info on Rost’s assets, arguing such info is relevant because the existence of significant assets may explain Rost’s “lackadaisical attitude toward finding meaningful employment,” according to Gorenstein’s ruling.

The drugmaker maintained his assets are of particular significance, given his claim that he “abandoned the pharmaceutical industry and pursued a new career as an author and freelance journalist, claiming no meaningful income to show for his efforts.” Rost has since marketed himself as a litigation consultant, wrote novels and become a blogger, mostly on his own site and also on BrandWeekNRx, although that just ended due to a lack of advertising support.

However, Gorenstein ruled that while an individual’s assets are relevant to his motive to look for work, “Rost’s subjective motivations for taking particular actions to find alternative work were irrelevant to the question of whether his conduct was objectively reasonable.” He also rejected Pfizer’s argument that Rost might contend his lack of resources meant he didn’t the financial means to look for a job – for example, to purchase an airplane ticket to a distant city for a job interview.

“Rost has conceded that he will make no such argument and, more broadly, that he will not raise for any reason the issue of his assets or lack thereof following his termination from Pfizer,” Gorenstein decided. And so he ruled that Pfizer hasn’t shown that Rost’s assets were relevant to any issue in the case.

Separately, Rost recently filed a motion in federal court in Boston, where he is pursuing is whistleblower lawsuit against Pfizer, in which he submitted evidence that he hopes will prove his case. You can read about that here.