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Monday, May 19, 2003Cases like that involving the cholesterol-lowering drug Baycol may have some merit, but the Paxil case is silly. Paxil isn't addicting by any means, although some people do get a little dizzy when they discontinue it. The dizziness isn't permanent and it doesn't cause any long-standing damage. On the other hand, Paxil is a good drug for depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, and anxiety. And it has far fewer side effects than the older anti-depressants. But, then, it isn't really about protecting people from bad drugs. It's about the money: Medical trends aside, plaintiffs' lawyers acknowledge that much of the momentum behind the suits comes from the increasing aggressiveness and wealth of the trial bar. These days, the battle between drug companies and plaintiffs' lawyers is no longer one between corporate goliaths and individual advocates on a shoestring budget... ....Plaintiffs' lawyers can now finance enormously complicated suits that require years of pretrial work and substantial scientific expertise, in the hope of a multibillion-dollar payoff. Scores of firms collaborate on a case, with some responsible for finding claimants, others for managing the millions of documents that companies turn over, others for the written legal arguments, and still others for presenting the case to a jury. Some 60 firms have banded together, for example, in the Baycol litigation. They sound like the Borg. In fact, they are like the Borg. They’re devouring every profitable company in sight: In addition, the plaintiffs' bar has refined a technique in drug lawsuits that it has used effectively against many asbestos companies. Lawyers file a few cases with very sick plaintiffs in states and counties considered favorable to plaintiffs, while building big "inventories" of less seriously ill patients, or so-called pill-taker cases, even people who have used the drug but are not sick. If the lawyers can win large verdicts in the early cases, they then refuse to settle the claims of their other very sick clients unless the defendants also agree to pay the claims of people who are less sick. Under those circumstances, the companies face a difficult choice. If they go to trial in a case that includes a few seriously injured plaintiffs and hundreds more who are less affected, they risk losing hundreds of millions of dollars in a single case, frightening Wall Street and spurring more suits. But if they settle cases without a trial, they risk being perceived as an easy mark for lawyers. That’s one sure way of stifling innovation. Sue the pharmaceutical companies into bankruptcy or into paralysing fear. God save us from the lawyers. posted by Sydney on 5/19/2003 07:43:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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