Judge Tosses Two More Seroquel Lawsuits
7 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // January 8th, 2010 // 8:36 am
AstraZeneca is now batting 100 percent in the Seroquel litigation. So far, the drugmaker has not had to square off in court against any of the plaintiffs who have filed lawsuits over its Seroquel antipsychotic, because the lawsuits that come up for trial keep getting dismissed. The lawsuits allege links to diabetes were hidden.
Yesterday, a Delaware state court judge tossed two more suits, because the plaintiffs couldn’t establish through expert medical testimony that the drug played a role in their illnesses (see letters here and here). An AstraZeneca spokesman says the drugmaker is now eight for eight, when counting two test cases bounced from federal multidistrict litigation in Orlando. Another case was withdrawn.
“This litigation has been around since 2003 and they still can’t get a case to trial,” Michael Kelly of McCarter & English, who reps AstraZeneca, tells The Am Law Daily. “These are presumably their best cases. It’s telling that they can’t even get these to trial.”
gavel courtesy of walknboston on flickr creative commons
MsPiggy
The only way AstraZeneca can win these cases in the courts, is to keep it out of a jury’s hands.
Just another case of our politicized justice system not working for the people.
Justice in MI
Note that these cases were lost on the basis of proving causal link between Seroquel and particular AEs–always hard to do, unless rare AEs.
As far as AZ burying studies, and using “smoke and mirrors” to cover the link between Seroquel and weight gain/diabetes, that is all stated clearly in (no longer confidential) internal documents that have now been made public.
They can win all the court cases in the world, and those documents will not go away.
Matthew Holford
“These are presumably their best cases. It’s telling that they can’t even get these to trial.”
Michael Kelly should tone down his triumphalism… He may see the plaintiffs as his adversaries, but not so long ago, they were AZ’s customers. What will present and potential AZ customers make of that, I wonder?
Gee, makes me proud to be British… In any event, given that Big Pharma has been known to bribe Plaintiff’s lawyers (I’m thinking Eli, here), the strength of Plaintiff’s case is not necessarily defined by success at court.
Matt
Jack Friday
Stay tuned - something BIG is coming!
PharmaHeretic
In case you find this interesting…
http://pharmaheretic.wordpress.com/2010/01/07/finicky-sar-01/
“Certain scaffolds are blessed, or cursed, with extremely finicky SAR. Consider the scaffold in the box, which can with very little modification give you amoxapine (antidepressant), loxapine (typical anti-psychotic?), clozapine (the 1st atypical anti-psychotic), olanzapine (another atypical anti-psychotic) and quetiapine (still another anti-psychotic).”
pharmavet
It’s still a losing proposition for AZ. With over 20K lawsuits pending, AZ is spending tens of billions in legal fees just to break even.
justdivin
I would like a raise of the hand of any AZ researchers, attorneys, board members etc. that take this medication or any of them with family members who are prescribed this poison. Case closed