Suit Settled Against RU-486 Investor

The nonprofit group preparing to launch the abortion pill RU-486 in the United States later this year said Wednesday that it has settled a lawsuit with a San Diego company that had threatened to delay the product’s introduction.

The Population Council sued RU-486 investor Joseph D. Pike and his company, Neogen Investors, in November, claiming that Pike had concealed information that he was a disbarred lawyer who had been convicted of forgery.

Under the settlement, reached Tuesday, Pike has agreed to sell most of his financial stake in the RU-486 project and to relinquish any role in management of a new company set up to distribute the drug.

Pike will retain a “modest, although passive” investment role in the project, the New York-based council said.

It said a new company, to be called Advances for Choice, has been established to oversee manufacturing and distribution of the abortion pill.

The company, to be based in New York, will be headed by Jack Van Hulst, a Dutch attorney who has been working as a consultant to the Population Council.

Although the Food and Drug Administration declared the drug safe and effective in September, the agency has not yet given final approval to the council’s plans for manufacturing and marketing it.

Sandra Waldman, a council spokeswoman, said the litigation may have delayed the pill’s introduction “a little bit,” but she said she is confident it will be on the market by the end of this year, as originally planned.

RU-486, which was developed in France, has been on the market in that country since 1988 and has been taken by an estimated 200,000 European women. The drug’s maker, Roussel Uclaf, donated U.S. marketing rights to the Population Council in 1994. Because of protests from anti-abortion groups, its introduction in the United States has been delayed ever since.

The dispute with Pike proved embarrassing to the Population Council, a family-planning research group. It drew attention to the fact that the group had turned over distribution rights to someone with a criminal conviction.