1 Boring Old Man

Insider Trading, Goldman, Carlyle, Ally, TD in Court News
Bloomberg
By Elizabeth Amon
January 19, 2012

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Johnson & Johnson [JNJ] officials hid three studies showing some patients using Risperdal developed diabetes while claiming the antipsychotic drug didn’t cause the disease, a witness testified. As early as 1999, Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen unit had researchers’ findings that about half the patients taking Risperdal in a study comparing its risks to those of Eli Lilly & Co.’s Zyprexa antipsychotic drug developed diabetes after a year on the medication, Joseph Glenmullen, a psychiatrist and Harvard Medical School instructor, told a Texas jury yesterday. That study concluded Risperdal caused “medically serious weight gain” that led study subjects to develop diabetes, Glenmullen testified in the trial of the state of Texas’s lawsuit over Janssen’s marketing of the drug. At the same time, Janssen salespeople were telling doctors that researchers concluded the drug didn’t cause the disease, Glenmullen added.

Texas contends New Brunswick, New Jersey-based J&J, the world’s largest health-care products company, defrauded the Medicaid program by promoting Risperdal for uses not approved by U.S. regulators, including for children with psychiatric disorders, and misleading doctors and regulators about the drug’s risks. The state joined a lawsuit filed by a whistle-blower, Allen Jones, a former Pennsylvania health-care fraud investigator. Lawyers for Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott are asking jurors in state court in Austin, Texas, to order J&J and Janssen to pay at least $579 million in damages over the companies’ Risperdal marketing practices.

Michael Clements, a Janssen spokesman, didn’t return a call for comment yesterday on Glenmullen’s testimony about the company’s handling of the studies. Glenmullen, testifying as an expert for the state, told jurors Janssen officials didn’t turn over Study 113, which found Risperdal posed a higher diabetes risk than Zyprexa, to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration when regulators began probing links between anti-psychotic medications and the disease in 2000. The drugmaker also didn’t turn over the results of two other later studies that found Risperdal and Zyprexa posed comparable diabetes risks to the FDA.

J&J Said to Settle Texas Risperdal Anti-Psychotic Drug Case
Bloomberg
By Jef Feeley and Margaret Cronin Fisk
January 19, 2012, 10:23 AM EST

Johnson & Johnson agreed to settle Texas officials’ claims that the drugmaker fraudulently marketed its Risperdal anti-psychotic drug and end a trial over the allegations, people familiar with the case said. The settlement will be announced in court today, the people said.