Seroquel Maker Given More Time to Settle Lawsuits

London, UKAstraZeneca, the manufacturer of Seroquel, has been granted more time to settle nearly 6,000 lawsuits. The lawsuits at issue are only a portion of some 17,500 lawsuits that the manufacturer has agreed to settle by way of a $198 million kitty. That announcement was made last month.

However, the 6,000 will have to wait a little longer after the US Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation vacated orders to send the cases back to their home courts for trial in late August. The cases, consolidated in federal court in Florida, according to Bloomberg BusinessWeek on 10/01/10, could suffer undue hindrance in arriving at settlements.

"A remand at this juncture would likely disrupt the settlement dialog," US District Judge Anne Conway, based in Orlando, Florida, said in an August 30 order asking the judicial panel to forgo remands. Returning the cases could "stall negotiations altogether," Conway said.

AstraZeneca, the UK's second-largest drug manufacturer, faces a total of 26,000 lawsuits alleging various Seroquel side effects, including birth defects. The manufacturer has settled about two thirds of those cases.

"We remain committed to a strong defense effort, but will continue to participate in the court-ordered mediation process," Tony Jewell, a US spokesman for the drug maker, said in an interview on August 31.

According to Bloomberg the payouts would average about $11,000 per litigant. An attorney familiar with the case and the mediation said that a return to court-ordered mediation would not necessarily improve the chances that the parties would settle at that umber. He said that while he would continue to participate in the mediation process, he believes that at that figure the cases would not settle.

Seroquel, which has also been allegedly linked to hyperglycemia and tardive dyskinesia, is the second-largest selling drug in AstraZeneca's basket of products, achieving $4.9 billion in sales last year, according to Bloomberg.