Pharmaceutical

Below are some of our pharmaceutical cases and venues (client names are not mentioned to protect confidentiality):

• New Jersey. Pharmaceutical product liability (multiple cases).
• Los Angeles, California. Case involving an alleged failure to warn.
• Orange County, California. Alleged organ failure from a pharmaceutical product.
• Houston, Texas. High-profile case involving an injectable medication.
• Austin, Texas. Series of cases involving the state suing a pharmaceutical company.
• North Carolina. Dispute over patent royalties for a medication.
• New Orleans, Louisiana. Dispute over drug development royalties.
• Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Several high-profile cases involving prescription medication.
• Vermont. Pharmaceutical product liability case.

WE UNDERSTAND YOUR SPECIFIC NEEDS

• Serial litigation. Pharmaceutical companies often face many trials on the same medication. With each trial, you want to improve your case strategies, your case themes, your witnesses, your evaluation of the risks of various plaintiff “types”, and your ability to spot dangerous jurors in jury selection. You also need to get new trial teams up to speed on what has been learned in previous trials, so mistakes are not repeated. We are highly familiar with these issues and we don’t just help you prepare for a single case; we help you make sure that each trial experience improves your chances at the next trial.
• Handling bad “sound bites”. Almost every pharmaceutical case has a few company (and sometimes expert) witnesses who make truly unfortunate remarks in their depositions. We have a specific tutorial developed to help pharmaceutical witnesses avoid sound bite testimony in deposition and/or to handle difficult questions about the sound bite calmly and effectively at trial.
• Accurate jury selection. Accurate jury selection is essential in pharmaceutical cases. In most venues, some jurors are instinctively negative toward pharmaceutical companies and will find against the company on principle, regardless of the strength of the defense case. Identifying and striking these un-persuadable jurors in jury selection is critical to success at trial. We often design our researches to provide you with practical voir dire questions to help you identify and strike these dangerous jurors.

WE PROVIDE COST-EFFECTIVE ANSWERS TO YOUR QUESTIONS

Our goal in any consulting assignment is to answer your strategic questions and to help you evaluate the risk of trial in the most cost-effective way possible. We can often get clear answers to your questions without the expense of a multi-day mock trial.

Below are some specific client questions we were able to answer:

• How tough can we be when we cross-examine the injured plaintiff?
• How do we handle deposition testimony from the prescriber that he would have “wanted to know more” about the drug?
• How do we deal with emails from a rogue company scientist who wrote his concerns about the safety of the drug?
• If we have a good science case, will that overcome our weaker company conduct story?
• Which of my attorneys will be most effective for presenting opening statements in this venue?

What do we already know about how jurors decide pharmaceutical cases?

• The rapid-fire “laundry list” of warnings at the end of drug commercials has become many jurors’ picture of an inadequate warning—a warning designed to protect the pharmaceutical company without providing any usable information to the public.
• Jurors’ fears about company conduct (e.g., pharmaceutical companies ignore clear risks to increase their profits, the FDA is overworked or easily influenced, etc.) have more impact on their verdict decisions than their sympathy for the plaintiff.
• Showing compassion and respect for an injured plaintiff does not make jurors believe the company is conceding liability.