Lilly Wins A Zyprexa Court Ruling

This has to be the first positive ruling for Eli Lilly in Zyprexa litigation in ages. From Bloomberg:

"U.S. District Court Judge Jack B. Weinstein in Brooklyn, New York, said he will exclude the expert testimony of Dr. Stephen Hamburger. The doctor has offered testimony in some 20 individual Zyprexa cases, seven of which now have pending summary judgment motions before Weinstein, the judge said in a decision issued yesterday.

"Hamburger was 'shockingly careless about the facts in the cases he proposes to opine about,' Weinstein said. The doctor gave conflicting answers to questions about the 'claimed causal link between Zyprexa intake and medical injury,' he said.

"'Faced under oath with consistent extensive factual discrepancies in his analysis, he merely shrugged them off or flippantly shifted to new theories,' Weinstein said. 'He repeatedly and impermissibly stretched the truth to support findings of causality.'"

Something tells me that there are plenty of other expert witnesses who can be called...and that Lilly's victory is only temporary. This is of course the big remaining federal court case which could result in Lilly settling with the various unions and pensions plans suing it for billions of dollars, as Judge Weinstein has previously suggested it do. Lilly has already settled about $2.7 billion in claims regarding Zyprexa.