On Trial, Starting Monday: Does Pfizer Drug Raise Suicide Risk?

[WSJ_law_blog]

We’ve got good news for all those who long for the good old days of Big Pharma litigation — when juries seemed to bring forth provocative rulings every month or so concerning Merck’s painkiller Vioxx.

Monday, another high-profile pharmaceutical litigation kicks off in a Boston federal courtroom, with plaintiffs lawyer Mark Lanier — who handled much of the work in Vioxx — squaring off against Pfizer over the company’s anti-epilepsy drug Neurontin. Click here and here for curtain-raisers from the American Lawyer and Bloomberg, respectively.

The case, the first of some 1,200 Neurontin suits in the pipeline, was brought by the family of Susan Bulger, a 39-year-old woman who took the drug before hanging herself in 2004.

In an interview with the American Lawyer, Lanier conceded he’s likely to have a tough case. “I’ve got a near impossible case,” Lanier told us. “If I lose, it’s almost like a focus group educational experiment. If I win, it portends bad things for Pfizer.” That point was made by Boston federal district court Judge Patti Saris, who, at a pre-trial hearing, called Bulger’s case “very tough” because of the plaintiff’s “personal history.” Says Lanier: “[Bulger] tried to commit suicide three times. She prostituted herself. She abused drugs.”

According to papers filed by Pfizer, reports Bloomberg, Bulger’s life was “fraught with psycho- social stressors, including physical and mental abuse, long-term substance abuse and addiction to cocaine, heroin, Methadone and Oxycontin.” Wrote Pfizer lawyers: “Mrs. Bulger attempted suicide multiple times before ever ingesting Neurontin,” Pfizer said in court papers. “Six months before her suicide, Mrs. Bulger was caught buying cocaine on the street.”

Countering Lanier are a pair of heavyweight defense lawyers: Boies Schiller’s William Ohlemeyer, a the former associate general counsel for cigarette maker Altria Group and Skadden’s Mark Cheffo.

According to product-liability experts, the Neurontin litigation is likely to unfold much in the manner of Vioxx, where a handful of early verdicts paved the way for a settlement down the road. “What you have here is a standard case of individual trials that are going to produce early readings from a host of jurisdictions,” said Anthony Sebok, a professor at the Cardozo School of Law, to Bloomberg. “The manufacturers will have to litigate five to 10 cases as they did in Vioxx to get a clear picture of what juries will do.”