Jury selection to begin in drug dilution lawsuit

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Court officials said Wednesday that they have issued about 600 summonses to potential jurors in a cancer patient's lawsuit against two pharmaceutical companies and a former pharmacist who has admitted diluting chemotherapy drugs for profit.

Jury selection is scheduled to begin this morning in Jackson County Circuit Court, and Senior Judge Lee E. Wells has said he hopes to have a jury impaneled by Friday afternoon.

Both sides met with Wells for a final round of pretrial motions on Wednesday afternoon, but no action was taken in open court.

In the trial, which is expected to last between four and five weeks, jurors will be asked to decide whether the drug companies, Eli Lilly & Co. and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., should bear any responsibility for Robert Courtney's actions.

Courtney pleaded guilty in February to federal charges of adulterating, misbranding and tampering with chemotherapy medications.

He is scheduled to be sentenced in December and faces up to 30 years in prison.

The lawsuit by Georgia Hayes, an ovarian cancer patient who says Courtney diluted her chemotherapy drugs, claims that the pharmaceutical companies should have known in 1998 that something was wrong.

Hers is the first of hundreds of suits against the drug makers and is considered a barometer of the likely outcome of the other cases.

Michael Ketchmark, one of Hayes' attorneys, said Wednesday that class action status had not been sought because each plaintiff's circumstances are different.

When data showed that Courtney's sales of the chemotherapy drugs to cancer doctors far exceeded his purchases from the companies, the lawsuit claims, Eli Lilly and Bristol-Myers Squibb should have alerted the Food and Drug Administration.

Eli Lilly, based in Indiana, and New Jersey-based Bristol-Myers Squibb, have denied any wrongdoing, saying they took all the security steps required by law.

The drug companies' attorneys also have tried to cast doubt on Courtney's admission to the FBI that he was diluting drugs as early as 1992. They also dispute that Hayes, who is now in remission, suffered lasting harm from Courtney's actions.

On Tuesday, Wells denied the companies' request to dismiss the case against them. He also denied a defense motion to sever the companies' case from Courtney's.