Peter Loftus -- On Dow Jones Newswires, Is Running My May 19, 2009 Story -- Tonight.

It is all about Judge Cavanaugh's allowing the CafePharma posts to be included, as potential future pieces of evidence, in In Re Schering-Plough Vytorin Securities Fraud Class Action Litigation (Case No. 08-285, US Dist. Ct., NJ).

I ran an essentially identical story on May 19, 2008 -- the morning after Judge Cavanaugh ruled, in the above matter. In any event, do go read all of Peter's, tonight -- he makes quite a clever story out of the history, in this federal MDL litigation:

. . . .In March 2007, the author of one post on the Schering section of CafePharma claimed to have a "buddy" in Schering's research arm. "He says that the study is a bust," the post stated. Another post in 2007 stated, "Heard it crashed and burned!" A third, detailed post about the study stated, "Adding Zetia to high dose generic statin provides no real benefit." Vytorin is a single-pill combination of the drugs Zetia and simvastatin.

The lawsuit, filed by several U.S. state public-employee pension funds, claims the substance of these posts was confirmed in 2008 when the results were finally made public.

Schering-Plough asked the judge to exclude these posts from the lawsuit because their authors' identities couldn't be confirmed. It's possible they were written by rival company reps, short sellers or other "mischief makers," the company argued. CafePharma has a policy of not recording any identifying information of its posters.

Schering also tried to discredit CafePharma by calling it "the cyberspace equivalent of scrawls left on a men's room wall." It's true -- many posts are filled with profanity and slurs, and have little to do with the task of marketing prescription drugs.

But Judge Cavanaugh ruled that both the CafePharma postings and the confidential witness statements "are relevant to the ultimate issue" because they "purport to show the timing within which defendants became aware of the Enhance study's results."

Members of Congress, who are investigating Merck's and Schering's actions, also have sought information about the CafePharma posts. . . .

Very cool; on Dow Jones' Wires -- and an excellent story, quite well-told!