Lipitor claims head to federal court

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By David Donovan
Dolan Media Newswires

South Carolina will play host to major litigation against the drug-maker Pfizer after the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation recently consolidated 56 cases against the company into the state’s federal court district.

The plaintiffs in the cases are all women who claim that Pfizer’s cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor caused them to develop type-2 diabetes. The plaintiffs claim that Lipitor increases a woman’s risk of diabetes by up to sevenfold and that Pfizer knew, or should have known, about those risks but failed to adequately warn patients and physicians about them.

On Feb. 21, the panel assigned the cases to U.S. District Court Judge Richard Gergel. Fourteen of the 56 cases are already pending in South Carolina and being overseen by Gergel.

All the plaintiffs had asked the panel to consolidate the cases, but they disagreed over where they should be sent. Currently there are more cases pending in South Carolina than any other district, but several others states had been suggested by other plaintiffs. Although Pfizer opposed the motion to consolidate, South Carolina was its preferred venue in the alternative.

Many of the South Carolina plaintiffs are represented by the law firm of Richardson, Patrick, Westbrook & Brickman. Attorney Blair Hahn of the firm’s Mount Pleasant office praised the panel’s decision.

“We’re very excited about the decision,” Hahn said. “We think that the consolidation will be a very good thing for women’s health nationwide, and we look forward to litigation.”

The panel had denied a similar motion brought by some of the plaintiffs last July. At that point, there were only five suits and 24 potential “tag-along” actions—pending cases involving overlapping questions of fact—spread across 13 judicial districts, and then, as now, Pfizer opposed consolidating the claims. At the time, the panel said consolidation was unwarranted because almost half the claims were pending in South Carolina and Pfizer said it was willing to work with plaintiffs in the other cases to coordinate discovery and other pre-trial matters.

The number of cases against Pfizer has proliferated widely since then, however, growing to 56 actions and over 170 tag-alongs pending in more than 40 districts before more than 100 judges — and there will likely be more on the way. The number of plaintiffs law firms involved in the case has also thus grown accordingly, the panel noted.

The panel also rejected Pfizer’s argument that consolidating the cases would create an avalanche of “non-viable” Lipitor cases in order to coerce a settlement. The panel said that assigning all of the cases to Gergel would make him uniquely well positioned to recognize and dispose of frivolous claims.