Zyprexa Document Leaker Heads To Court
7 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // January 14th, 2010 // 8:32 am
Just
when you thought the Zyprexa off-label saga was history… Jim Gottstein,
an attorney who was one of three people named as conspirators in the
infamous Zyprexa document scandal three years ago, will begin oral
arguments on Feb. 2 in his fight against an injunction leveled against
him by a federal judge in New York.
For those who don’t recall, Gottstein, who runs The Law Project for Psychiatric Rights, a non-profit against forced drugging, was accused along with two others by US District Court Judge Jack Weinstein of violating a court order by scheming to leak and publish sealed Zyprexa documents. The Zyprexa documents, which detailed hidden side-effect data and improper marketing, were published by The New York Times (Gottstein provides documents and related background here), setting off a feverish debate over the public’s right to know about concealed side effect data.
Last year, however, Lilly agreed to plead guilty and pay $1.415 billion, which included a $515 million fine for a misdemeanor criminal charge, for off-label promotion of Zyprexa (see here), which was only dwarfed by Pfizer’s $2.3 billion settlement. And the others? Weinstein called the Times reporter ‘reprehensible,’ but didn’t mete out any punishment. David Egilman, who was an expert witness for plaintiffs’ lawyers suing Lilly, earlier settled for $100,000 (background).
As for Gottstein, he maintains innocence. “Ever since Judge Weinstein ruled against me on February 13, 2007, Lilly has threatened me with civil and criminal contempt sanctions and going after my license to practice law,” Gottstein writes to supporters. “I believe I did nothing wrong - that when Lilly failed to object after being given a reasonable opportunity to do so and then Dr. Egilman sent the Zyprexa Papers to me, they had lost their secrecy protection. I hope the Second Circuit will agree.”
Ellsberg
Any link to where Gottstein “writes to supporters”?
Ed Silverman
Dear Daniel Ellsberg,
Not that I’m aware of, no. It arrived in an email I received.
ed
Condor
Ed — and Daniel:
This is a video-style Blogspot blog, linked off of the lawyer’s genreal legal defense fund 501(c)(3) web-site — it seems to be full of updates about issues related to law and pysch, more broadly, but also covers quite a few updates on the Zyprexa Papers cases.
Namaste
Evelyn Pringle
Lilly is despicable. Gottstein and Egilman are heroes.
We have a sick court system that allows a drug company to hide documents for 10 years that show a drug is killing people the whole time and the company knew it.
Egilman is a doctor. What was he supposed to do when he knew Lilly was getting ready to settle more Zyprexa cases with agreements to keep the documents hidden longer - let more people die?
And what does he get for his good deed? He has to pay the thugs $100,000.
Years ago, the judge in this case sounded like a caring guy, but not anymore.
kimbriel
Jim has a cause - Psych Rights - on facebook. He posted his writings there.
Justice in MI
Evelyn has done heroic reporting on this. Vive Evelyn!
Daniel haszard
Eli Lilly has made $40 billion on $10 a pill Zyprexa and it was way oversold and caused diabetes and in some cases sudden death.
Zyprexa was pushed by Lilly Drug Reps.
They called it the “Five at Five” (5 mg at 5 pm to keep nursing home patients subdued and sleepy) and “VIVA ZYPREXA” (Zyprexa for everybody) campaigns to off label market Eli Lilly Zyprexa as a fix for unapproved usage.
I am a living example of Zyprexa gone/done wrong was given it 1996-2000 off-label for PTSD got sudden high blood sugar A1C 14.7 in January 2000.The stuff was worthless for my condition PTSD and cost me thousands in co-pays gave me diabetes.
–
Daniel Haszard http://www.zyprexa-victims.com