"Some people went along, but many attorneys realized it would be a tough sell for their clients, " said Mark Pruner, vice president of RD Legal Funding and editor of the firm's Fen-Phen Settlement Observer newsletter.
That's what happened with fen-phen, where Wyeth was swamped with far more expensive cases of heart-valve damage than lawyers--or scientific knowledge--would have suggested was possible.
Its APD356 is far more specific, and so far the heart valve damage that led to fen-phen's withdrawal has not reared its head.
That's what happened in the 1990s with fen-phen, another diet drug combination that includes phentermine.
The trust bought a neighbouring stubble field called Hullback's Grove in 2005 to expand Arger Fen to 120 acres (40 hectares).
It is very typical of a type of habitat called fen meadow - it's that sort of habitat that we want to restore.
's latest attempt to settle tens of thousands of fen-phen lawsuits appears to have suffered the same fate as those that came before--failure.
The result is that some of Britain's most valuable technology businesses are continuing to emerge from Silicon Fen.
That's what happened in mass-tort settlements involving asbestos, Vioxx, fen-phen and other products, where lawyers cleverly bundled hundreds or even thousands of claims that might not stand a good chance in court with a few that threatened blockbuster verdicts.
"Given the experience of fen-phen, it would border on malpractice if Merck's lawyers allowed the same kind of 'litigation doctors' to provide evidence for claims, " said Lester Brickman, professor at Yeshiva University's Cardozo School of Law and expert on mass-tort litigation.
Unlike Xenical, previous diet drugs, such as Redux and Phenfluramine, best known as the "phen" in Fen-Phen, worked on the brain to control the body's feeling of "fullness".
CNN: FDA delays approval of new diet drug amid cancer concern
Kenneth Frazier , Merck's general counsel, indicated that Vioxx would be more like Propulsid and less like fen-phen. (Frazier mentioned these medicines explicitly during his presentation.) Vioxx has only been generically linked to heart attacks, and it will be more difficult to prove the drug caused them.
Daniel Becnel is a Louisiana lawyer who's been involved in most of the big class-action lawsuits of recent years: tobacco litigation, fen-phen, Vioxx.
应用推荐