Bloomberg Fights AstraZeneca's Attempt To Hide Seroquel Documents

As I noted yesterday, lawyers for AstraZeneca, makers of Seroquel, moved last week to seal numerous documents in a forthcoming federal court case involving the company and its $4.5 billion a year drug and to close an upcoming court hearing to the public. It's a move that runs counter to America's long tradition of open courts and the press' right to report on court proceedings. I had hoped at least one press organization would file a counter-motion to AZ's and indeed the Bloomberg wire service did last Friday. Thanks to a friend, I've now obtained both AZ's original motion and Bloomberg's motion and am making them publicly available. Please note that the AZ filing came to me in text form from a legal database, so the formatting and pagination isn't the best, even after I tried to clean it up. That motion is here.

Anyway, AZ lawyers argue, in part:

"Selective publication of these documents by Plaintiffs before trial, however, would present incomplete and out of context information relating to Seroquelís safety and efficacy to the public. This could mislead the public and healthcare providers and create a potential public health risk. To the extent this information is offered at trial, the documents will be placed in context and the whole story will be presented at once.

"Third, allowing plaintiffs to publicly disseminate a handful of cherry-picked documents containing out of context and incomplete information will present a misleading and unfairly negative image of AstraZeneca right before trial and taint the potential jury pool."

There are other reasons cited by the company's lawyers to seal the documents, but those are the gist--public health problem and tainting of possible jurors.

Keep in mind that many thousands of pages of Eli Lilly's internal corporate documents were under a court seal, but were leaked to the New York Times and, later, to me in late 2006. The paper and I (and others) reported on them extensively for the next two-plus years. I know of not one case of a public health problem erupting as a result or of oodles of patients going off their Zyprexa without consulting a doctor. If someone at AZ or on its legal team wishes to show me where the release of those documents into the public realm caused problems for patients, you know where to find me. But, as such, AZ's legal argument on this point is specious.

So, too, is its "tainted juror pool" line of reasoning. The media, for example, reports on murders and accused murderers all the time in advance of trial and I don't know of too many instances of juries not being able to sort through facts presented at trial because they were unduly influenced by pre-trial publicity.

The bottom line here is that the public has an absolute right to know the details of whatever hinkey-dinkey AZ may have allegedly been up to with Seroquel and it's the press' job to let the public know. Even Judge Jack Weinstein, who oversaw (and still oversees) Zyprexa litigation in federal court on New York and who originally was quite upset when the Zyprexa documents were leaked, later had a change of heart in 2008, a fact noted by Bloomberg's lawyers:

"'Public access' Judge Weinstein wrote, 'is now advisable because this litigation involves issues of great public interest, the health of hundreds of thousands of people, fundamental questions about our system of approval and monitoring of pharmaceutical products, and the funding for many health and insurance benefit plans. Public and private agencies and organizations have a right to be informed. At this stage public disclosure, congruent with our long tradition of open courts, is desirable'...."

"The plaintiffs’ allegations against AstraZeneca in this case are similar to the allegations made by the plaintiffs in the Zyprexa litigation. The world therefore is watching this litigation closely and with great concern that yet another pharmaceutical product may have been widely marketed without adequate warning of its health risks. Investors in AstraZeneca also are watching closely for fear that AstraZeneca will suffer a similar fate to that suffered by Eli Lilly. Many observers also are watching this litigation to assess how the Courts deal with claims that may have enormous impact on public health and welfare."

You can read the Bloomberg motion in its entirety here.

I hope the judge in this case rejects AZ's motion and rules in favor of the public's right to know.

Separately, the editorial board of the St. Petersburg Times opined yesterday on this case that:

"[T]he real public safety issue is one of public health and whether the company hid findings that Seroquel causes weight gain and diabetes. The legal system must put public health — and a patient's right to know — above a company's interest in secrecy....

"There is altogether too much secrecy in court cases that implicate public health. If the records being held back contain information that the judge would like to know before taking Seroquel, then the public should know as well. No other interest should take precedence."

I agree.