Plaintiff Alleges Perjury in Actos Bellwether Trial

I'm blogging several times a day about products liability for Law.com. Occasionally I cross-post an excerpt of a blog I find interesting:

Plaintiff's lawyers in a bellwether trial over whether Eli Lilly and Company's Actos drug causes bladder cancer allege that a witness for defendant Eli Lilly has committed perjury and have asked for the court to issue a default judgment as a consequence.

The plaintiff's counsel also allege that the witness committed “contumacious” conduct, or conduct that is willfully disobedient to the court's authority.

Plaintiff's counsel allege that Ronald Hoven, former senior director for global marketing at Eli Lilly, committed perjury and disobedience to the court's authority because he “expressed a stunning lack of knowledge throughout his adverse witness examination by plaintiffs.” In contrast, Hoven submitted a declaration in a state-court lawsuit about Actos that he had personal knowledge about issues involving the drug, plaintiff's counsel said.

For example, the plaintiff's lawyers said in court papers that Hoven said he had no knowledge that there was a change to the Actos label to include a bladder-cancer warning even though it is a drug “for which he was previously a brand leader, about which thousands of lawsuits across the country have been filed, and for which he received a litigation hold.”

In another example, the plaintiff's lawyers said “Hoven denied having any knowledge of Upjohn backing out of the approval process of Actos due to safety, even though Upjohn's withdrawal was a direct windfall for Eli Lilly to step in and control the United States marketing aspect for Takeda from 1999 to 2006 in addition to being a long-term global partner that continues to reap the benefits from the sales of Actos.”

Takeda Pharmaceuticals North America, Inc., is a codefendant in the case of Allen v. Takeda Pharmaceuticals going through a trial in the U.S. District Court of the Western District of Louisiana.

In a third example, the plaintiff's counsel allege that Hoven committed perjury by denying involvement in Zyprexa, a drug on which Eli Lilly entered a corporate integrity agreement with the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Inspect General for illegal marketing.