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Pfizer Tries Again for Sanctions Against Neurontin Witness

By Jim Edwards

Updated on: November 13, 2009 / 2:49 PM EST / MoneyWatch

Pfizer (PFE) is playing hardball in its attempt to get sanctions applied to an expert in the Neurontin litigation who contacted another witness wthout the drug company's permission. The company is asking a judge to overturn the ruling of a federal magistrate that sanctions should not be applied to Dr. David Egilman, an expert witness for plaintiffs in the case.

Download Pfizer's motion here.

Pfizer contends that Egilman sent an unfairly truncated copy of a controversial email to another witness in the case, the doctor who treated Hartley Shearer, a Massachusetts man whose family claims he killed himself after taking the drug, and is now suing Pfizer.

BNET revealed in October that the email was from former Pfizer vp/neuroscience Atul Pande, telling a colleague that there is "negligible evidence" for the use of Neurontin in bipolar disorder and that the drug is "not a good anti-manic treatment."

In its motion objecting to federal magistrate Leo Sorokin's ruling, Pfizer describes an interview it did with Shearer's doctor, Lisa K. Catapano-Friedman, about Egilman's communications with her:

A. My thoughts were that somebody was trying to influence my testimony. Q. And how did that make you feel? A. Insulted.
Dr. Catapano-Friedman had a similar reaction upon learning that Dr. Egilman had materially altered one of the documents he had sent to her.
A. It just reinforces my feeling that somebody was trying to influence my thinking and thereby my testimony.

Egilman scoffed at Pfizer's motion. He told BNET:

"They're convicted felons [Pfizer took convictions as part of a Neurontin settlement with the Department of Justice and in the $2.3 Bextra settelement]. They're convicted of fraud. People should consider that ... when they read their accusations."

Judge Patti Saris has yet to rule.