ALSO Not "Settled" -- And Not Mentioned By Kenilworth -- All the Personal Injury Claims, in the 140 Suits. . . .

Or, "Verily, the sharp employ the sharp -- a man may be by his lawyer, known."

-- Voltaire

[UPDATED 08.06.09 @ 10 AM EDT -- news posts, on this topic, here, here, here and here; and that kind gentleman across the pond, The Insider, at PharmaGossip, has linked this! Thanks!]

Not that I am remotely-surprised, here, by Schering-Plough's internal lawyers, but it is all rather silly -- this cat-and-mouse game -- with Wall Street. Could the Kenilworth denizens actually believe that anyone would be fooled by this? I mean, c'mon -- these New Jersey federal District Court filings are a matter of public record, tonight, people. As ever, click to enlarge:

. . . .with the exception of the personal injury claims. . . .

So all the suits will continue, none will be dismissed, in total (despite the contrary impression Schering-Plough created in its press release, this morning), and each will proceed toward discovery, and trial -- just on a more limited set of claims -- that is, on the issue of whether Vytorin and/or Zetia caused personal injuries, by deceptively "steering" patients away from the proven-to-improve cardiac outcomes statins, as a class of medications for high cholesterol, in favor of Vytorin/Zetia.

Certainly, to the extent that any of the plaintiffs suffered a cardiac event, or subsequently do so, there will be a fair argument that the event might not have occured had the patient stayed on statins. There will also, in all such cases, be some fairly significant damages -- damages, the plaintiffs will assert, which occured primarily because Schering-Plough effectively "fooled doctors into" prescribing Vytorin/Zetia, instead of tried-and-true statins -- with the carpet-bombed televison ads (now banned by FDA). This will also lead to arguments for medical monitoring funds -- to track these patients longitudinally.

Given the above, doesn't this assertion -- out of the Kenilworth legal team, seem too cute, by (at least) half? ". . . .These agreements will allow the companies to avoid continuing defense costs. . . ." I certainly think so.

Voltaire was right. These are all disappointingly sharp practices. And all of that is before we get to this -- from the SEAS study:



One later thought, here -- the $41.5 million to be paid in settlement, as announced today, will go, to a substantial degree, to cover the plaintiffs' attorneys fees, to date. So, this may well turn out to be a rather foolish longer-term move, by Schering-Plough, and New Merck. Why? Well, now these plaintiffs' lawyers are "playin' with the house's money" -- as they move forward to litigate the above-described personal injury claims.

Said another way, today's settlement has actually taken a fair amount of risk off of the table -- from the plaintiffs' lawyers perspective. Remember that they are paid on contingency -- only if there is a recovery. It is likely that this partial settlement will make them whole, were they to have been billing on an hourly basis, for their services (at least, thus far).

So -- have Schering-Plough and New Merck effectively "comped" these lawyers -- into an Emperor's Suite at the Bellagio (snort!), as well as handed them a foot-tall stack of $1,000 chips to take back to the tables, in the coming months and years? Are these companies really that desperate for would-be "good news", going into the shareholders' merger-vote meetings, on the 7th?

We shall see.