Nation watches county drug case
The Beaumont Enterprise
03/16/2004

BEAUMONT - Plaintiff's lawyers across the nation have their eyes on a Jefferson County courtroom this month.
A Beaumont mother of three is at the center of a diet drug lawsuit that could affect how lawyers handle similar cases in the future, according to case observers.

The family of Cynthia Cappel, who died in 2001 at age 41, is suing Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories, the company that manufactured the combination of drugs known as Fen-Phen.

Cappel's is the first Fen-Phen case to go before a jury that claims the drug caused primary pulmonary hypertension, a rare and deadly lung disease.
Fen-Phen cases that have gone to trial have centered on heart-valve deterioration, said Beaumont-based lawyer James A. Morris Jr., who won such a case in November.

"This is extremely important to both sides of the bar and the public at large," Morris said.

Lawyers for Cappel and Wyeth presented their opening arguments to a packed courtroom Monday.

Judge Donald Floyd of the 172nd District Court has prohibited lawyers in the case from talking with media until after the trial, which is expected to last several weeks.

Cappel began using Fen-Phen in November of 1996 and stopped in July 1997. The drug was taken off the market the following month.
Houston-based lawyer John M. O'Quinn argued Monday that Wyeth knew its product caused primary pulmonary hypertension, that it deceived the federal Food and Drug Administration and didn't pull its product off the market because it was "making too much money."

"They were making so much money off this drug, it was, 'sell, sell, sell - conceal, conceal, conceal,'" O'Quinn said. "That was their business plan."
Lawyer Thomas W. Pirtle showed the jury documents, including internal Wyeth memos, allegedly detailing the company's plan to suppress medical evidence of Fen-Phen's dangers, especially that it was dangerous for use longer than 90 days.

"You're going to be the first jury in America to see a lot of this stuff," Pirtle said.

Bill Sims, the Dallas-based lawyer for Wyeth, took it slow and steady in his opening arguments Monday, trying to show what Wyeth has done good for humanity.

Wyeth developed forms of penicillin, polio vaccinations and the drug that eradicated small pox.

Likewise, the company developed Fen-Phen to help with America's obesity epidemic, Sims said.

"The FDA believed these medications served an appropriate purpose," he said.
Sims said evidence would show that Cappel took only a 90-day supply of the drug.

Cappel's husband Jerry Coffey and the couple's three daughters, ages 9, 7 and 4, are seeking unspecified damages for pain and suffering, loss of consortium and punishment.