Eli Lilly Once Again Goes After Alaska Lawyer Over Zyprexa Documents

As I noted a few weeks ago, the Bloomberg wire service fought to get some documents unsealed in the Alaska v. Lilly lawsuit, settled earlier this year, over allegations that the company's antipsychotic Zyprexa had serious problems and that the company covered up the facts, among other allegations. One group of documents was unsealed and I wrote about them here.

Meanwhile, Alaska lawyer Jim Gottstein has been fighting to get even more documents from the case unsealed. Gottstein is of course the lawyer who leaked an earlier set of Lilly Zyprexa documents, which were under court seal in a federal court case, to the New York Times and others. Lilly got a judge to sanction Gottstein and David Egilman, the initial leaker who settled with Lilly earlier for $100,000, but, so far, Gottstein has fought the judge (and Lilly, of course) on that sanctioning.

Anyway, among the documents Gottstein is trying to get unsealed in Alaska are the same set of Zyprexa documents that led to much bad press for Lilly (and are housed on my site). Why they would be under a court seal in Alaska when they were already in the public realm is a bit beyond me, and now Lilly is fighting Gottstein's attempt to get them unsealed. If I understand its lawyer's argument in this filing (4 MB pdf), it's making the case that since Gottstein was already sanctioned over leaking these documents by a federal judge, then the state court in Alaska shouldn't honor his request for the documents. I'd say that Lilly's legal point is moot. The documents have been in the public realm since early 2007, so the company is doing little with its filing but messing with Gottstein.

In fact, the company's outside counsel in the case is now threatening Gottstein with further legal sanctions and the company itself is pretty obviously trying to find a way to bleed him financially so that no one will ever again dare cross mighty Lilly when it makes a drug that is poisoning innocent people and lies about it by doing something like telling the public about it. Here's the threat:

"Mr. Gottstein's actions, along with his abuse of the Alaska subpoena power and his willful violation of MDL Orders, are the subject of an appeal pending before the Second Circuit, and may be the subject of further sanctions proceedings before Judge Weinstein. Granting this application would have the unintended--but nevertheless real--effect of nullifying, in part, Judge Weinstein's efforts to enforce his orders, and would allow Mr. Gottstein to effectively modify an injunction entered as a result of his willful violation of another court's order. Such an action by this Court would raise thorny issues of comity and federal-state court relations. But those issues can be avoided if this application is denied or, in the alternative, stayed pending disposition of the federal proceedings."

My view on this is that it is time for Eli Lilly to grow up and shut up and discontinue its scorched earth policy towards those who ruffle its feathers. Zyprexa has killed thousands and given tens of thousands of others diabetes and other serious health problems and the company actively worked to conceal all of this from its customers. The fact that Gottstein continues to point this out--and let's remember, he is trading in true statements as far as I can tell--costs Lilly nothing. The company continues to see over $4 billion a year in sales of the drug, roughly the same as before the documents were leaked. So exactly what injury is Lilly trying to address at this point?