OXYCONTIN SUITS BECOME MATTER OF FINGER-POINTING

Perdue Pharma accuses plaintiffs - who blame the drug company for their
addictions - of pre-existing drug habits.

ABINGDON - As the first OxyContin lawsuits filed in Southwest Virginia near
a conclusion, two starkly different versions are emerging from court
records. Did Purdue Pharma, the pharmaceutical company that has reaped
billion-dollar sales of the prescription painkiller, overpromote the drug
while ignoring dangers that contributed to countless people becoming
addicted?

Or does the blame rest with the three men who have sued the company, who are
being described by Purdue Pharma as doctor-shopping, pill-popping drug
abusers who don't deserve to collect a penny? In court papers made public
Friday, Purdue Pharma cited what it called illegal drug use by A.F.
McCauley, Joseph Deckard and Charles Brummett in asking that their lawsuits
be dismissed. U.S. District Judge James Jones is scheduled to hear oral
arguments in Abingdon on Monday before making a decision. All three of the
plaintiffs - residents of Lee and Scott counties who sought relief from the
pain of hard labor jobs in coal mining and construction - took other
opium-based drugs long before they tried their first OxyContin pill, Purdue
Pharma stated in court papers. Brummett, for example, received prescriptions
from multiple doctors for drugs that included Lortab, Lorcet, Endocet and
Percocet. "The record is devoid of any competent evidence that OxyContin -
as opposed to the laundry list of other opioids Brummett consumed - caused
anything to happen to Brummett that would not have happened anyway,"
Abingdon lawyers William Eskridge and Wade Massie wrote in asking that the
lawsuits be dismissed. In thousands of pages of documents gathered since the
lawsuits were filed three years ago, Purdue Pharma also pointed to instances
where the plaintiffs illegally purchased drugs on the street. The question,
however, is whether that behavior came only after the men were rendered drug
addicts through the negligence of Purdue Pharma, the plaintiffs responded in
court papers. "Pinpointing exactly when the plaintiffs became OxyContin
addicts is a complex question, but demonstrating that they did not manifest
the symptoms of opioid addiction until after their OxyContin treatment is
not," attorney Emmitt Yeary of Abingdon argued. As the result of Purdue
Pharma's "excessive and successful promotion" of its drug, "the community
became a hot spot for widespread OxyContin abuse and addiction," Yeary
wrote. More than 140 people from Southwest Virginia have died in the past
five years from overdoses of oxycodone, the active ingredient in OxyContin,
according to the medical examiner's office in Roanoke. Countless others have
been afflicted by addiction and crime that police attribute to the drug. To
dismiss the lawsuits at this point, Yeary wrote, would "deny the community a
public accounting of Purdue's malfeasance." If the lawsuits survive a motion
to dismiss, the first one could go to trial as early as October. A key
allegation in the litigation is that Purdue Pharma heavily marketed
OxyContin, dispatching its well-paid sales representatives to target doctors
in Southwest Virginia, while downplaying the addictive side of the drug. So
far, Purdue Pharma has fared well in OxyContin litigation. Of approximately
500 lawsuits filed across the country, the company says, about 100 have been
dismissed or dropped. When McCauley's lawsuit was first filed in June 2001,
attorneys asked for $5.2 billion in what they predicted would become a
class-action suit. But four other people who made claims along with McCauley
dropped out of the case, and attorneys later decided to abandon plans of
class-action certification. Earlier this week, Jones agreed to make public
hundreds of pages of documents - including Purdue Pharma's detailed defense
to the allegations - that had been filed under seal, in part because they
contained the plaintiffs' medical records. The judge unsealed the records at
the request of The Roanoke Times. The newspaper's attorney, Stan Barnhill,
cited a First Amendment right of access to proceedings of such "crucial
public interest."