Ongoing Case Status

12/8/2008

There are currently more than 500 cases pending against Novartis alleging that the company failed to warn physicians, patients and the medical community that Aredia and Zometa cause osteonecrosis of the jaw (ONJ). To this day, despite overwhelming scientific, academic and medical evidence supporting a causal relationship, Novartis continues to deny any association between the two drugs and ONJ.

The cases are working their way toward trial. Last spring, the parties agreed on the first ten cases to be tried. Plaintiffs' Counsel expects the first trial to take place in the late summer of 2009.

Over the last 12 months, Plaintiffs' Counsel has taken the depositions of more than 50 Novartis representatives, including both current and former employees. The information learned in these depositions confirms what Plaintiffs counsel has suspected from the outset: Novartis never looked for ONJ while it was developing Aredia and Zometa, despite medical literature and a historical phenomenon known as Phossy Jaw that should have alerted Novartis to the possible disfiguring and painful side effect.

Right now, the parties are engaging in expert witness discovery. On October 6, 2008, Plaintiffs Counsel served nine reports on Novartis on topics including oncology, chemistry, the Food and Drug Administration and Phossy Jaw (an earlier version of ONJ), all intended to show that Novartis knew or should have known about ONJ before they started selling Aredia and Zometa. The FDA report also demonstrates how little Novartis has done to learn about or combat ONJ since reports of the disease began appearing in 2002. To date, more than 5,000 reports of ONJ have been recorded around the world.

On December 3, 2008, Plaintiffs' Counsel received Novartis' expert witness's reports. Plaintiffs' Counsel served select rebuttal reports on December 17, 2008. The next several months will be spent taking the depositions of Novartis' experts and defending the depositions of our experts. After that, each side will be given the opportunity to challenge the "expertise" of the other side's experts.