Legal News

Pfizer and Plaintiffs End Fight Over 1996 Drug Trial

By Michael Rothfeld

After 15 years of battling with Pfizer Inc. and the potential for legal setbacks, plaintiffs settled with the company over an experimental drug trial on 200 children with meningitis in Nigeria.

According to this Corporate Counsel story, the plaintiffs were worried about a recent 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals decision in another case barring claims against a corporation under the Alien Tort Statute, the same one they’d used to sue Pfizer. The case had previously gone to the Supreme Court after a lower court dismissal in 2005, and survived. From the Corporate Counsel story:

The suit accused Pfizer of using the experimental drug without the consent of the parents, and of not telling the families that another acceptable drug was available and was being used by Doctors Without Borders in Nigeria to treat the epidemic. Pfizer denied their allegations.

According to a Pfizer spokesman, the settlement, which is confidential, allows a maximum of $175,000 to be paid per child to people who can prove death or permanent disability due to a 1996 trial of Trovan. The drug now is limited to adult emergency care in the U.S. The payments would come from a $35 million trust fund set up as part of a settlement with the Kano state government in Nigeria. A WSJ Health blog item on the previous settlement is here. In a joint statement, Pfizer and the plaintiffs said the dispute had been “amicably resolved after many years of litigation.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on February 23, 2011 (boomark / email).