Healthy Skepticism Library item: 19213

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Publication type: news

J&J to pay $73 million in legal costs over Risperdal
APP.com 2011 Feb 18
http://www.app.com/article/20110217/NJBIZ/110217030/J-J-to-pay-73-million-in-legal-costs-over-Risperdal

Full text:

Johnson & Johnson must pay $73 million in legal costs to the state of Louisiana over a more than $257 million verdict against the drugmaker over the marketing of its Risperdal antipsychotic drug, a judge ruled.

Judge Donald Herbert in Opelousas, Louisiana, ruled last week J&J must pay $70 million in legal fees and $3.3 million in expenses to cover Louisiana’s costs in suing the drugmaker over claims it defrauded the state’s Medicaid system by touting Risperdal as superior to competing antipsychotic drugs and minimizing its links to diabetes.

“We believe the fees are excessive,” Michael Heinley, a spokesman for J&J’s Ortho-McNeil Janssen Pharmaceuticals unit, said in a Feb. 15 telephone interview. “They exceed the applicable legal standard of reasonable, necessary and proper as related to the investigations and proceedings.”

The verdict was the second trial loss for New Brunswick, New Jersey-based J&J in a state lawsuit brought over Risperdal marketing. A West Virginia judge in a non-jury trial last year awarded $3.95 million, finding the company misled doctors about the risks and benefits of Risperdal. J&J’s lawyers appealed that verdict.

Louisiana’s case centered on drug safety claims that J&J and its Ortho-McNeil-Janssen unit made in November 2003 correspondence to 700,000 doctors. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration responded with a warning letter saying J&J made false and misleading claims that minimized the potentially fatal risks of diabetes and overstated the drug’s superiority to competitors.

35,542 violations

A state court jury found J&J officials violated the state’s Medical Assistance Programs Integrity Law with their marketing tactics a total of 35,542 times over Risperdal. The panel imposed a penalty of $7,250 for each violation.

Heinley said J&J will ask Herbert to grant a new trial in the case. If he refuses, the company will appeal the verdict and the fee award, he said.

“We’re very satisfied with the fee award and think it’s fair and reasonable,” Pat Morrow, an Opelousas-based lawyer who represented the state in the case, said in a Feb. 15 telephone interview.

Morrow said the state had sought as much as $95 million in fees for the litigation, which spanned six years and required lawyers to take 224 depositions of witnesses.

Morrow and other lawyers for the state argued during the September 2010 trial that J&J wrongfully touted Risperdal as safer than competing antipsychotics such as Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly & Co.’s Zyprexa and London-based AstraZeneca Plc’s Seroquel. Risperdal global sales peaked at $4.5 billion in 2007, declining after the company lost patent protection.

The case is Caldwell ex rel. State of Louisiana v. Janssen Pharmaceutical, 04-C-3967, 27th Judicial Court, St. Landry Parish, Louisiana (Opelousas).