Lilly Acts to Counter Attack Ads

-Indianapolis Star

10/14/2004 - Eli Lilly and Co. said it is concerned that lawyers are scaring some patients from using the anti-psychotic Zyprexa by running advertisements seeking clients who feel they have been harmed by the drug.
The Indianapolis drug maker is asking some lawyers who run the ads to tone down the mentions of dire side effects and to urge patients to talk to their doctors before they stop taking Lilly’s top-selling drug.
Lilly also has sent letters to U.S. physicians to assure them that Lilly is responding to the “aggressive” legal ads and that Lilly will offer limited legal help if the doctors are sued for prescribing Zyprexa.
The ads are part of a campaign by product-liability law firms in several states to drum up clients to join a mass legal action against the Lilly drug.
They pose a threat to Lilly because Zyprexa generated 34 percent, or $4.27 billion, of the drug maker’s total sales last year.
Because of the negative publicity and competition from rival products, the number of prescriptions written for Zyprexa fell 9.7 percent in the third quarter compared with a year ago, said David Moskowitz, a drug-stock analyst for Friedman Billings Ramsey, in a report on Lilly this week to investors. He said U.S. sales are expected to fall 12 percent this year over last.
“The company hopes to stabilize growth of Zyprexa by year-end, with a new ‘offensive’ focus on the merits of treatment with Zyprexa,” the report said.
Lilly spokeswoman Heather Lusk said the ads are “scaring patients off the medication.” But she noticed “quite a few law firms have stopped running the ads since Lilly began complaining.
One television ad flashes the word “warning” and says Zyprexa can cause “in some cases coma…even death.”
A newspaper ad by the firm of Hunt & Serreno, of Charleston, W.VA., is headlined “urgent warning” and says “you may be at risk” by taking Zyprexa.
About 100 Zyprexa product-liability lawsuits have been filed against Lilly in federal court since 2003. All have been consolidated under one judge in the Eastern District of New York. Thirty to 50 other cases have been filed in state courts, said Michael A. London, a New York attorney who is vice chairman of the plaintiffs’ steering committee for the federal cases.
The suits charge that Lilly downplayed or failed to warn doctors and patients of potential serious ill effects from taking Zyprexa, including diabetes, weight gain, and high blood pressure.
The drug is federally approved to treat schizophrenia and manic depression, but it often is prescribed for non-approved mental conditions, such as panic attacks and mood disorders.
Lilly has said its studies don’t show Zyprexa causes the blood-sugar disorder of diabetes, one of the most serious charges being leveled. Lilly has said that schizophrenics, to whom the drug is primarily marketed, show a marked tendency toward becoming diabetic.
London, the plaintiff’s attorney, called the Lilly letter to doctors “smoke and mirrors” and said the drug firm is the one that should have run advertising, to warn of the alleged diabetes link with its drug.
“Is Lilly now so concerned about the health of people? They are taking this drug, marketing it…to such a massive degree and not appropriately telling these doctors about weight gain, about diabetes.”
Another plaintiff’s attorney, Mark Burton of the San Francisco firm of Hersh & Hersh, said it’s Lilly that’s interfering with the doctor-patient relationship by sending out “4,000 sales representatives across the country basically hounding doctors” to prescribe Zyprexa.
No trial date has been set in the federal cases. The first three witness depositions have been taken, and Lilly has turned over several thousand pages of what eventually could amount to millions of pages of documents to plaintiffs’ lawyers, London said.
Lilly said in the letter that “we plan to vigorously defend Zyprexa against any and all lawsuits.” It offered to “provide selected resources,” such as scientific expertise or help in finding an attorney, to doctors who are sued over prescribing Zyprexa.
But Lilly won’t be able to indemnify, or assume legal costs, of doctors, as it has in similar lawsuits involving its antidepressant Prozac in the 1990s.
“Certainly we can’t provide indemnity like we have in the past,” Lusk said

If you or a loved one have experienced Zyprexa side effects you may be entitled to compensation. Contact the Zyprexa attorneys of Ennis & Ennis today for a free confidential case evaluation. Our on staff nurse and lawyers are standing by to answer any questions you may have regarding Zyprexa side effects, a possible Zyprexa class action lawsuit, or any other type of Zyprexa litigation.