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Lawsuits fault off-label use of Neurontin in suicide cases.

Article Excerpt
David Franklin's four-month stint at pharmaceutical maker Parke-Davis provided him an unexpected education. Hired as a medical liaison in 1996, Franklin was told that the job entailed giving doctors scientific information about the company's drugs. Instead, he was encouraged to promote the drug Neurontin for off-label uses, despite a dearth of legitimate studies showing its efficacy.

Today, at least 90 percent of Neurontin prescriptions are for off-label uses such as treatment for bipolar disorder and a wide variety of pain syndromes. The drug is FDA-approved only for use with other drugs to treat epilepsy and as a treatment for nerve pain resulting from shingles. (Although it is illegal for pharmaceutical companies to promote drugs for off-label uses, doctors are allowed to prescribe drugs for any use they deem necessary.)

The whistleblower lawsuit that Franklin brought under the False Claims Act was settled in May. Neurontin's maker, Pfizer (which had acquired Parke-Davis's parent company, Warner-Lambert, in 2000), agreed to pay the federal and state governments a penalty of $430 million for its role in illegally marketing the drug for nonapproved uses and to reimburse Medicaid for its costs. (Franklin v. Parke-Davis, No. 96-CV-11651-PBS, Criminal No. 04-10150 (D. Mass. May 13, 2004).)

Now, a spate of new lawsuits promises to keep the popular drug in the news. Many current cases are class actions for consumer fraud, in which plaintiffs are seeking reimbursement for a drug they say the company knew could not help them, but a growing number focus on an alleged side effect of Neurontin: suicides.

Harris Pogust, cochair of ATLA's new Neurontin Litigation Group, said his firm in Pennsauken, New Jersey, has filed two such cases and sees potential clients daily. The harm done by...

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