Ruling promises bright future to city's trial bar

Philadelphia's robust trial bar and the corporate defense lawyers who regularly go up against it seemed assured of doing battle for years to come under the Supreme Court decision yesterday allowing lawsuits over FDA-approved drugs to go forward.

In essence, the court said that FDA approval is no defense in cases where drugmakers fail to adequately warn patients and doctors about potential side effects that can cause serious injury, even death.

The principle effectively underlies much of the litigation over the alleged harmful effects of drugs.

On any given case, hundreds of lawyers in the Philadelphia area might be employed either defending a drugmaker or trying to make a case against one.

"There are pockets of drug litigation primarily where the companies are headquartered or where particular attorneys general are interested in doing something about [drug safety]," said Stephen Sheller of the Sheller P.C. law firm of Philadelphia, which won a huge settlement from Eli Lilly & Co. earlier this year in a whistle-blower lawsuit involving the antipsychotic drug Zyprexa.

That Philadelphia is one such area was amply illustrated in the multibillion-dollar litigation over the pain-relief medication Vioxx. Merck & Co. Inc., which has a major research presence in the region, settled the case with dozens of plaintiffs firms in late 2007, after initially pursuing the novel strategy of fighting each claim against it in a trial.

Thousands of plaintiffs around the country had alleged that they had suffered heart attacks and strokes as the result of taking Vioxx, and accused the company of failing to warn them.

The case was labor-intensive on both sides.

One of the major defense firms in the case, Dechert L.L.P., employed hundreds of contract lawyers, in addition to dozens of partners and associates, to comb through medical records and other documents to fend off lawsuits.

Plaintiffs firms, meanwhile, mounted their own massive investigations, poring through patient medical records and clinical trial data. One plaintiff's firm alone, Center City's Kline & Specter P.C., said that 54 million documents were filed and that lawyers took about 2,000 depositions in its case.

Such litigation is only one small part of a wide-ranging trial bar in Philadelphia that began to emerge both in the city and nationally about 50 years ago, said Sayde Ladov, chancellor of the Philadelphia Bar Association. Trial lawyers in Philadelphia have done battle not only with pharmaceutical makers, but also with China-based companies that make defective tires, manufacturers of latex gloves, and many other products.

"The plaintiffs bar in Philadelphia is an extremely strong and cohesive bar," she said.

Hundreds and hundreds of other lawyers in Philadelphia have been kept busy defending companies that have been sued.