Consumer Law

Eli Lilly Settlement ? Watch Your Emails!

By Joe Consumer

Some interesting details in The Legal Intelligencer today about Eli Lilly?s agreement to pay $1.42 billion ?including the largest criminal fine in history -- $515 million? and plead guilty to violating the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, settling charges for illegal marketing of Zyprexa, an anti-psychotic drug, for off-label use.

 ?Nine whistleblowers -- all former Lilly sales representatives -- will share a reward of more than $78 million from the federal settlement and possibly up to $25 million more in still-to-be-negotiated rewards from the state settlements.?

Acting U.S. Attorney Laurie Magid, said ?Lilly knew that its patent for Prozac was expiring and ?wanted Zyprexa to be their new blockbuster drug?, mounting an ?elaborate marketing campaign? including instructing 'its long-term care sales force to tell doctors in nursing homes that Zyprexa would help patients with sleep problems, behavioral issues and dementia.'  They even had a sales slogan '5 at 5,' meaning that five milligrams of Zyprexa at 5 p.m. would help their patients sleep."

The article also described how whistleblower settlement talks, which should have been secret, were leaked out to the New York Times last year, when ?one of Lilly's lawyers at Pepper Hamilton in Philadelphia ?mistakenly e-mailed confidential information? on the settlement talks to Times reporter Alex Berenson.?  Apparently the intended recipient was attorney Bradford Berenson at Sidley Austin in Washington, D.C."

Back to snail mail for them!

Full post as published by ThePopTort on January 16, 2009 (boomark / email).