Legal News

Report: Record-Setting Zyprexa Settlement Could Come Tomorrow

By Dan Slater

The NYT is reporting that Eli Lilly is expected to agree as soon as Thursday to pay $1.4 billion to settle criminal and civil charges that it illegally marketed its antipsychotic drug Zyprexa for unauthorized use in patients particularly vulnerable to its risky side effects.

If this news sounds familiar, it’s because the Times, nearly a year ago, reported similar discussions of a $1 billion-plus settlement over Zyprexa.

Loyal Readers will remember how the NYT got the story: The source of the leak was a lawyer at Pepper Hamilton, who, believing he or she was sending a packet of confidential documents to co-counsel, Bradford Berenson at Sidley Austin, mistakenly e-mailed the documents to New York Times reporter Alex Berenson.

When Berenson began calling around for comment and seemed to possess remarkably detailed information about the negotiations, Eli Lilly initially believed that the source of the leak had been the government. Ouch!

As for today’s update, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, declined to comment to the NYT. An Eli Lilly spokeswoman told the NYT that she couldn’t comment on the status of the Zyprexa negotiations.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on January 14, 2009 (boomark / email).