Glaxo Will Pay $460M To Settle Most Avandia Suits
11 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // July 13th, 2010 // 1:14 pm
In hopes of isolating a problem that weighs on its stock, GlaxoSmithKline has agreed to pay $460 million to settle roughly 10,000 of the 13,000 or so lawsuits filed over its Avandia diabetes pill, Bloomberg News reports. The deal, which works out to about $46,000 each, comes just three months before the drugmaker faces its first Avandia trial in federal court in Phildelphia.
“This is exceptionally good news given the market has discounted $6 billion in liability,” for Avandia litigation, Gbola Amusa, an analyst at UBS in London, tells the news service. “We had outlined an absolute worst-case scenario where $500,000 per case would have to be paid.” In other words, investors feared Avandia litigation might eventually reach more than $6 billion in costs.
By settling the lawsuits, Glaxo may accomplish something that has, so far, been impossible - avoiding a continual stream of headlines about Avandia and cardiovascular risks that were certain to make litigation more challenging. The agreement comes two months after Glaxo agreed to pay $60 million to settle 700 Avandia lawsuits. Glaxo has taken a similar tack with its Paxil antidepressant, having agreed to settle about 200 lawsuits last month for an undisclosed sum.
Big Pharma Guy
There is no way that this isenough to appropriately compensate the victims of this travesty. Once again, Big Pharma gets off with paying pennies on the dollar, admitting no wrongdoing, and never truly being held accountable for their crimes against society. Gotta let those companies off or else there would be a huge hit to employment. Every time they face big problems, they cry about how being brought to justice would cripple their company. Then they proceed to merge, consolidate, close facilities and lay thousands of workers off. The only benefactors in thsi entire scenario are the execuives that made the wrongful decisions for their own personal gain! They laugh and go on to do the same thing again.
Justice
Pure pittance to them. They’ll do it again and again and again if this is the only penalty. Convict a few of their execs to put a stop to this behavior!
Salmon
Conviction of Pharma Execs is not enough.
Conviction of FDA officials who collude with those execs is also required.
Salmon
Matthew Holford
Stop buying their crappy products - they’d soon disappear down the pan with the rest of the shit.
Matt
Justice in MI
To borrow from Anonymous, the “Justice” up thread is not me! But there can be no shortage of Justice, and perhaps many anonymi also warranted.
Anyway, agree with Salmon. The generic drug bribery scams come to mind.
harpy
these are patient lawsuits so execs wouldn’t be in danger anyway, as I understand it. the question is whether DoJ is going to take an interest in prosecuting. from the reaction in Congress, I think they might…
pharmavet
Considering that sales of Avandia have been about $35 billion since it’s approval in 1999, then $460 million is really a small price to pay if you’re looking at it from GSK’s perspective. In reality, they’ve probably spent more than that on doctors’ lunches and dinners during that time period.
pharmavet
Salmon, the generic bribery scandal sent the head of the OGD to prison. Even I give FDA credit for figuring out how to avoid that outcome again.
ex-FDAer
The head of OGD went to prison for taking bribes. There are other crimes than taking bribes. For example insider trading.
pharmavet
Ex FDAer, I would tend to doubt that after the Imclone insider trading scandal that sent Dr. Sam Waksal to prison that any FDA person would be foolish enough to go there. Even Dr. Lester Crawford, ex FDA Commissioner got off with a slap on the wrist and a small fine for his stock misdeeds.
ex-FDAer
Pharmavet I wouldn’t be so sure if I were you. Besides insider trading was just an example of one possible criminal act that could be committed by FDA officials. There are many, many other possible crimes.