Mark Lanier told the Litigation Daily on Friday that he’s not expecting any miracles Monday, when he begins the first trial to test claims that Pfizer’s antiepilepsy drug Neurontin increases patients’ risk of suicide. He’ll be lucky, he said, to eke out a win. “I’ve got a near-impossible case,” Lanier told us. “If I lose, it’s almost like a focus group educational experiment. If I win, it portends bad things for Pfizer.” [Hat tip to Bloomberg, which offers this insightful trial preview.]
The case, the first of some 1,200 Neurontin suits in the pipeline, was brought by the family of Susan Bulger, a 39-year-old who took the drug before hanging herself in 2004. The suit, in federal district court in Boston, claims Bulger was taking Neurontin to treat epilepsy, as well as mood swings and arthritis pain (for which the drug was not approved but was allegedly marketed). “Our argument is that the drug company took advantage of fragile and unfortunately situated [patients] by marketing a drug illegally,” Lanier said. “They made Neurontin a snake oil to treat everything, when the FDA had not approved the drug for much of anything.” (Sounds like Lanier was trying out his opening statement on us!)
