Perhaps Jack Weinstein recognizes the irony in a passage buried in his voluminous draft discussion, which he issued last week in hopes of corralling Lilly to settle massive product-liability litigation brought by insurers and others who claim the drugmaker hid serious side effects, and that the antipsychotic was overpriced and improperly marketed.

In February 2007, the federal judge labeled a reporter for The New York Times ‘reprehensible’ for participating in what he called an illegal conspiracy to leak and publish sealed court documents about Zyprexa risks and marketing in a series of articles in late 2006. The episode angered patient and free-speech advocates, who contended that Weinstein’s decision to keep the documents confidential, even after many circulated on the Internet, was not only a First Amendment issue but violated public health.

Yet in a section of his draft discussion, beginning on page 137 and running just a few pages, Weinstein notes that disclosure of the sealed info prompted the FDA to press Lilly for additional info before proceeding with the drugmaker’s request to approve Symbyax, a combination of Zyprexa and its Prozac antidepressant. “In March 2007, the FDA raised additional data about weight gain and hyperglycemia and suggested that Lilly has not been forthcoming with additional data,” he wrote.

Weinstein then briefly recaps the agency’s subsequent efforts to ferret out the side effect info, and even cites FDA correspondence to Lilly in which the agency writes that “we lack important safety information needed to adequately update the labeling with all relevant risk information.” The labeling refers to Zyprexa, not just Symbyax, by the way. In other words, Weinstein does seem to acknowledge the sealed documents were deemed important by the agency overseeing public health.

Of course, Weinstein agreed to seal the documents, which made him the target of free speech and patient advocates, although such arrangements are usually made at the behest of lawyers for plaintiffs and defendants in the presumed interest of speeding along the litigation. Lilly, in particular, fought doggedly to have the documents remain sealed. Nonetheless, Weinstein’s own summary is a reminder that, without the leak, the risk info that so interested the FDA would have remained under wraps.

And what of the three conspirators?

The reprehensible Times reporter, Alex Berenson, is believed to be working on a novel. The former expert witness for plaintiffs’ lawyers, David Egilman, who is an associate professor at Brown University, settled with Lilly, although never admitted to doing anything illegal. And the final conspirator, Jim Gottstein, who runs a non-profit in Alaska against forced drugging, is fighting an injunction in which Weinstein accused him of violating a court order.