Pubdate: Thu, 16 Dec 2004
Source: Lexington Herald-Leader (KY)
Copyright: 2004 Lexington Herald-Leader
Contact:  http://www.kentucky.com/mld/heraldleader/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/240
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?232 (Chronic Pain)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/oxycontin.htm (Oxycontin/Oxycodone)

COURT DOWNGRADES OXYCONTIN SUIT

In a major victory for the maker of OxyContin, the Ohio Supreme Court
yesterday downgraded a closely watched lawsuit that accused the
company of over-promoting the narcotic pain killer, injuring many
people who took it.

The state's high court, in a 4-3 decision, stripped away class-action
certification granted to the suit in 2002 by a trial court in Butler
County, near Cincinnati.

That earlier decision had exposed Purdue Pharma, the Connecticut drug
company, to a potentially huge damages verdict on behalf of every Ohio
resident who claimed physical or emotional harm from the drug.

The case was the only one out of hundreds filed across the nation in
the past three years to achieve class-action status.

"We are gratified that the Ohio Supreme Court followed the law with
respect to class certification and ruled in our favor," Howard R.
Udell, a Purdue Pharma executive vice president and chief legal
officer, said in a statement yesterday.

David Ewing, a Louisville trial lawyer, said he and the team of
well-known plaintiffs' lawyers from Cincinnati and Louisville who had
filed the class action suit haven't yet decided whether to ask for a
reconsideration.

"If you add up the judges, more said it should be certified as a class
action than didn't -- the trial judge, the appeals court and three of
the seven Supreme Court justices," Ewing said. "But (Purdue) had the
four that mattered," he said, referring to the split decision.

The Ohio case was not only important because of its special legal
status but also because it produced stacks of company documents that
detailed how company marketers had in just a few years turned the
obscure pain pill into a "blockbuster" drug with current annual sales
of about $1.9 billion.

Dissolving the class action doesn't end the suit, Ewing said. Ohio
residents who claim injuries from OxyContin "don't go away," he said.
They can continue to sue individually, though he called that "a
monumental job" for a lone plaintiff.

Purdue introduced OxyContin, which contains large amounts of narcotic
in a time-release pill, in the mid-1990s. By 2001, many prescription
drug abusers had learned to defeat the time-release formula to obtain
a heroin-like high.

Widespread reports of addiction and death followed, particularly in
Eastern Kentucky and other Appalachian regions. That led to
allegations by scores of state and federal authorities and drug
addiction experts that the company had recklessly marketed the pill
for maximum profits, disregarding its dangers.

By last year, an embattled Purdue was defending itself in hundreds of
lawsuits nationally.

Last month, Purdue settled for $10 million one of the earliest of
those suits, brought in 2001 by the West Virginia attorney general,
who alleged dishonest marketing of OxyContin.

The agreement calls for Purdue to pay the state $10 million over four
years. The state will spend the money on such programs as law
enforcement training, and local drug abuse education and
rehabilitation. For some time after the litigation flood began, Purdue
had boasted that it had never settled or lost a case.

It admitted no wrongdoing in the West Virginia settlement.

The lawsuit had sought to recover more than $30 million that state
agencies said they had paid because of people's addiction to the
painkiller. It claimed that Purdue Pharma did not tell doctors,
pharmacists and patients about the drug's addictive qualities in its
push for higher sales.
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MAP posted-by: Derek