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Thu, 14 Feb 2002
Andrea Hopkins, Bristol Herald Courier
FEDERAL JUDGE RULES IN OXYCONTIN LAWSUIT ABINGDON -- A lawsuit against the makers of the popular and potent painkiller OxyContin will not go forward as a class action, a federal judge ruled Wednesday. As he made that ruling, U.S. District Judge James Jones conceded it could affect the legal rights of hundreds or even thousands of people who believed the lawsuit was protecting their interests. "There are persons whose interests are being litigated who are not present and are not represented by a lawyer," the judge said. "Their fate rides on that of others who are represented." The ruling came in response to a request by the attorneys for four area residents seeking billions of dollars from the drug's maker, Purdue Pharma of Connecticut, a group of related companies and an imprisoned doctor they accuse of overprescribing the drug. The plaintiffs claim they became addicted to the drug after taking it for legitimate medical reasons. The four named plaintiffs no longer want to represent all the other people who may have been harmed by the drug, said their attorney Dawn Stewart. Instead, they want to go forward as individual plaintiffs, she said. "Their circumstances have changed. They are unable to proceed ( as class-action representatives )," Stewart told the judge. "One plaintiff has been incarcerated, and we are having extreme difficulty getting in touch with her." Pursuing the class action also was expected to be time-consuming and expensive, Stewart said. Lawyers for the drug companies already had asked the judge not to certify the case as a class action, but he had not ruled on that motion when the plaintiffs asked to drop their bid for that status. Instead, the judge ordered Wednesday's hearing to decide how to protect the rights of other potential class action plaintiffs. Jones said he was concerned because the case had been the subject of widespread news coverage. "There were claims there were as many as 150,000 members of this class," Jones said, comparing the lawsuit to litigation against the tobacco industry. By seeking class-action status, the plaintiffs also may have extended the statute of limitations, or the length of time that others had to sue the drug company, the judge said. Ending the class action likely would start the clock running again, he said. In Virginia, potential plaintiffs have just two years from the time they allegedly are harmed to file a claim, he said. To protect the rights of other potential class members, the judge ordered the plaintiffs' lawyers to publicize the fact the case was not going forward as a class action. Stewart outlined the steps her law firm was ready to take, including mailing notices to any potential plaintiffs who had contacted the firm or other lawyers involved in the case. The firm also will issue a press release and will place an advertisement in a publication for Virginia lawyers, she said. "We don't want anyone's rights to be prejudiced," Stewart said. During the hearing, the judge set the case for trial beginning March 3, 2003. The trial is expected to last two weeks and is to be held in Big Stone Gap unless the lawyers ask to have it moved to Abingdon. The lawsuit was filed last summer amid a controversy over OxyContin, a synthetic form of morphine that was designed to be released over time and provide 12 hours of pain control. It often is used for chronic, severe pain like that associated with cancer or some back injuries. The drug was linked to more than three dozen deaths in Southwest Virginia last year, most involving abusers who crush the drug and inject or snort it to defeat the time-release coating and get a heroin-like high.