Kentucky Suspends Lawyers Who Won $200M Fen-Phen Case

Fen-Phen

Three attorneys have been temporarily suspended from practicing law in Kentucky because of questions about the way they divided a $200 million settlement from a fen-phen lawsuit.

The Kentucky Supreme Court took the action in written rulings released last Thursday.

In an order signed by Deputy Chief Justice Will T. Scott, justices said they found probable cause to believe that the attorneys had diverted funds to their own use.

Linda Gosnell, chief counsel for the Kentucky Bar Association, had argued before the Supreme Court last week that the attorneys — William Gallion, Shirley Cunningham Jr. and Melbourne Mills — improperly took more than their share of the settlement. The lawyers, all from Lexington, represented hundreds of clients in a lawsuit over the diet drug.

“Their conduct was drastic,” Gosnell told the court. “This is a case of absolute, unbridled greed.”

The Kentucky Bar Association’s Inquiry Commission had recommended the temporary suspensions.

Supreme Court Justice Joseph Lambert recused himself from hearing the case.

A lower court judge had previously found that the attorneys in the diet-drug case breached their duty to the more than 400 clients they represented. The clients have sued the lawyers in Boone County Circuit Court in northern Kentucky.

Merck Wins Latest Vioxx Case

Vioxx

Merck was found not liable in the seventh lawsuit over Vioxx, the arthritis painkiller that it pulled from the market because of heart attack risk, the company announced Thursday.

The jury of five men and two women found Vioxx was not a substantial factor in the heart attack of a 68-year-old New Jersey woman, a court clerk said. The trial was held at New Jersey Superior Court in Atlantic City.

The jury decided that although Merck failed to warn the plaintiff, Elaine Doherty, about the heart risks of taking Vioxx, it did adequately warn her doctor of such risks, the clerk said.

The panel also found that Merck did not commit consumer fraud or misrepresent Vioxx in marketing the drug to physicians or to the plaintiff, the clerk said.

Jim Fitzpatrick, an outside counsel for Merck, said in a press conference that the verdict “reiterates our strategy to defend these cases on an individual basis.”

Michael Galpern, attorney for Doherty, told CNNMoney.com that he had not decided whether to appeal, but his firm is representing more than 500 plaintiffs in upcoming Vioxx cases.

“This was actually a major victory for plaintiffs across the country as this was the first time that the jury was asked if Merck failed to warn the patients about the dangers of Vioxx and the answer was yes by a unanimous verdict,” said Galpern. “Unfortunately they found that Vioxx did not cause Mrs. Doherty’s heart attacks, and we are disappointed with that one.”

Merck and the Vioxx Rut

Vioxx

Merck’s stock price is starting to climb out of its hole this year, but the drug giant still faces a long uphill climb fraught with obstacles if it ever plans to get to its pre-Vioxx scandal levels.

Conflicted Safety Panel Let Vioxx Study Continue

Vioxx

In 2004, Merck pulled its painkiller Vioxx from the market. The drug was causing heart problems, strokes and deaths among patients in a large study that was under way at the time. Merck stopped the study early when those results became clear. Thousands of former Vioxx patients and their families are suing the company.

Now, documents obtained by NPR show that five years earlier, in 1999, during another large Vioxx study, patients had similar heart problems. But that study was not stopped.

Q&A: Monitoring Patient Safety

To learn more about data safety monitoring boards and their role in protecting patients who participate in drug studies, NPR turned to statistician David DeMets.

He says the current watchdog system is a good one, but that there are practical limits on the extent to which drug safety can be monitored.

Read the Q&A. June 8, 2006

During those five years, millions of Americans took Vioxx. And a Food and Drug Administration scientist has estimated that some 38,000 people who took the drug died.

Q&A: Vioxx Health Risks

Independent analysis of data sent to the FDA show that the cardiovascular risks from Vioxx begin shortly after a patient starts taking the drug. The data also indicate that the risks from Vioxx remain long after patients stop taking the drug.

NPR Health Editor discusses what’s known about Vioxx’s health risks. May 18, 2006

NPR’s Snigdha Prakash reports on why the earlier study wasn’t stopped and the public warned that Vioxx was unsafe.

How the New England Journal Missed Warning Signs on Vioxx

Vioxx

In August 2001, a Seattle pharmacist called a radio show on which Jeffrey Drazen, the top editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, was appearing. On the air, the pharmacist, Jennifer Hrachovec, begged Dr. Drazen to update an article in the journal that touted the benefits of the painkiller Vioxx while playing down its heart risks.

Dr. Hrachovec had been reviewing data on a Food and Drug Administration Web site indicating that patients in a Vioxx clinical trial had suffered more heart attacks than the journal article about the trial reported. “It bothers me there is more data from the trial than has ever been published and the New England Journal still hasn’t published an editorial or any kind of update,” she said. “My concern is that doctors are still using this and exposing their patients to higher risks of heart problems and they just don’t even know that that’s the case.”

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