Attorney General Jim Hood Recovers $18.5 Million for Mississippi Following "Loss" in Zyprexa Litigation
Last week Attorney General Jim Hood announced an $18.5 million settlement with Eli Lilly & Co. based on the company’s improper marketing of Zyprexa in Mississippi. Here is an L.A. Times article about the settlement.
In this post in December, I described a ruling in the case for Eli Lilly as basically throwing out the case. I was wrong. In retrospect, my opinion on the decision was influenced by posts on blogs that are cheerleaders for the pharmaceutical industry.
These blogs are good sources of information regarding the latest decisions in pharmaceutical cases. The problem is that they offer no objectivity. They are typically written by lawyers who are industry honks who want to look like true believers for the industry in order get hired in more cases. Every decision is either a big win for the industry or wrongly decided by a stupid judge. In the future, I will try to do a better job of using these blogs for information on recent decisions while ignoring the commentary.
Here are amounts recovered by some of the other states who settled Zyprexa cases:
- Idaho– $13 million
- Utah- $24 million
- West Virginia– $22 million
- Connecticut– $25.1 million
- South Carolina– $45 million
There is no doubt that the ruling hurt Mississippi’s claim and reduced the state’s recovery in the case. But the ruling was not a disaster for Mississippi.
It still looks bad for Jim Hood that one of the firms handling the case was a Texas firm (Bailey Perrin) that donated $75,000 to Hood. That looks like a pay-for-play situation. The Texas firm and a Mississippi firm (McCraney Montagnet & Quin) will divide a $3.7 million attorney fee in the case.
But with Mississippi in a budget crisis and Governor Barbour cutting the budget regularly, General Hood will not have to apologize for adding revenue to state coffers.
Thank you for shining the light on this and for revisiting your earlier post. It takes a man of substance to admit when he makes a mistake. You are correct to question the motives and the agendas behind LegalNews Line and the other industry hack sites. It's clear that they brazenly misrepresened the substance of the Judge's ruling, and that they will do anything to disparage the AG.
The Attorney General takes a lot of shots about hiring outside counsel but the fact is that this practice has brought in hundreds of millions of dollars to a state that is in dire need of this revenue.