Quoted from http://www.law.com/jsp/tal/digestTAL.jsp?id=1202437745728&Losing_Streak_Continues_for_Seroquel_Plaintiffs_in_Delaware
Losing Streak Continues for Seroquel Plaintiffs in Delaware
By Alison Frankel
January 07, 2010
When we last looked at the litigation over AstraZeneca's antipsychotic Seroquel in June, we found ourselves in the middle of a debate over whether the litigation was a bust for the thousands of plaintiffs who'd filed suits claiming the drug caused their diabetes. Delaware superior court judge Joseph Slights III, who'd just tossed a Seroquel case on Daubert grounds, warned in his opinion that plaintiffs had yet to establish that link successfully. But plaintiffs lawyer Paul Pennock of Weitz & Luxenberg cautioned us to reserve judgment. "Far from going away, Seroquel is about to reveal AstraZeneca as one of the worst managers of a mass tort litigation in history," he said.
Six months later, it's still AstraZeneca--and not the plaintiffs--with all the momentum.
On Thursday Judge Slights granted summary judgment to AstraZeneca in two more Seroquel cases, both on Daubert grounds. (His letter orders are here and here; a full opinion is expected next week.) So far, six Delaware Seroquel cases have been tossed.
Two test cases in the federal multidistrict litigation in Orlando have also failed to withstand AstraZeneca summary judgment motions based on Daubert challenges to plaintiffs' experts. All eight Seroquel cases that have come up for trial, in other words, have ended with pretrial wins for AstraZeneca.
Michael Kelly of McCarter & English, who was colead counsel in the two most recent Delaware cases with Donald Scott of Bartlit Beck Herman Palenchar & Scott, told us Thursday that it's time for the plaintiffs to concede defeat. "This litigation has been around since 2003 and they still can't get a case to trial," he said. Noting that the three most recent Delaware cases were all hand-picked by the plaintiffs, he added: "These are presumably their best cases. It's telling that they can't even get these to trial."
We e-mailed Pennock, hoping for another fiery retort. He referred us to the Bailey Perrin Bailey lawyer who handled the Delaware cases that were tossed Thursday. We left messages for them but didn't hear back.
Plaintiffs may yet turn the litigation around, with a spate of suits headed for trial in the coming months. Next on the docket, according to an AstraZeneca spokesman, is a New Jersey state court case with a February trial date. Thirty-eight others, according to the most recent status report in the MDL, have been transferred to federal district courts for pretrial proceedings.
