Pfizer settles most of its Bextra suits
Drug giant Pfizer Inc. has reached an $894-million deal to settle the bulk of the lawsuits over its withdrawn pain reliever Bextra, following the lead of rival Merck & Co., which is spending five times as much to settle Vioxx suits.
The Pfizer agreement also would end lawsuits over its popular Celebrex, the only one of three related anti-inflammatory drugs linked to an elevated risk of heart attacks and strokes still on the market.
The world’s biggest drug maker said Friday that it has agreements in principle to settle up to 92% of suits brought by people claiming Bextra and Celebrex caused heart attacks, strokes or other harm.
The settlement includes roughly 7,000 personal injury cases, mainly plaintiffs who took Bextra, said plaintiff attorney Perry Weitz. He represents nearly 2,000 claimants, about 10% of them relatives of people who died.
“It gives Pfizer closure and the claimants their money sooner, rather than later or never at all,” Weitz said.
Pfizer hopes to finalize the settlement by year’s end. It also hopes to include additional claimants in the settlement and will fight any remaining personal injury suits with court motions or at trial, General Counsel Amy Schulman said.
“I don’t think either side has an interest in protracting this,” Schulman said.
Weitz said plaintiff lawyers will “have issues” with Pfizer “if their claimants aren’t paid before the end of the year.”
Pfizer shares fell 6 cents to $16.91.
Schulman said the deal comes after two important court rulings -- one by a New York state judge overseeing many of the state-level personal injury cases and the other by a federal judge in San Francisco coordinating pretrial steps in federal lawsuits over the drugs.
“We teed up some pretrial motions for a court ruling on whether there was significantly reliable evidence that . . . there was an increased risk of heart attack and stroke at the most common dose,” 200 milligrams, Schulman said. Both judges ruled that was not the case, she said.
The proposed deal also would end suits by insurers and patients seeking to recover what they spent on Bextra and Celebrex, plus claims by state attorneys general that Pfizer improperly promoted Bextra.
Out of the total settlement, $745 million will go to settle personal injury cases, $89 million will cover consumer fraud cases over reimbursement for money spent on the two drugs, and $60 million will cover settlements with attorneys general in the 33 states and the District of Columbia. Louisiana and Mississippi still have pending cases regarding Pfizer’s marketing.
New York-based Pfizer will take a pretax charge of $894 million to its third-quarter earnings.
Pfizer withdrew Bextra from the market in 2005, a year after Merck withdrew Vioxx.
The Vioxx withdrawal triggered an avalanche of lawsuits against Merck and raised concerns about the safety of Celebrex and Bextra because they are in the same class, Cox-2 inhibitors.
