Nigeria's Pfizer lawsuit starts

Tue, 26 Jun 2007

A $7-billion lawsuit pitting the Nigerian government against US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer opened in Nigeria on Tuesday but the first day of proceedings was bogged down by legal technicalities.

The government is seeking the damages following a drug testing scheme carried out by Pfizer which allegedly led to nearly 200 youngsters either dying or suffering deformities.

Babatunde Irukera, the lawyer representing the government, filed a motion requesting to be allowed to introduce "additional facts" before the court.

After the hearing he told journalists that these additional facts were linked to what he said was an undertaking by Pfizer during separate earlier legal proceedings in the US not to invoke any time limitation in the event of a lawsuit brought in Nigeria.

"In exchange for having those cases dismissed before the US court, Pfizer agreed it would not raise any type of defence that could .. suggest this action occurred 11 years ago and as a result it is statute barred," Irukera said.

The government fears that Pfizer will "renege" on this undertaking, he said.

The drug test was carried out in 1996 in the northern city of Kano when there was an epidemic of meningitis, measles and cholera.

Lawyers told AFP that there were grounds in Nigerian law for arguing that the case filed 11 years later by the Nigerian government should have been brought within a maximum of six years from the alleged facts.

On 4 June, Nigeria filed a lawsuit against Pfizer for administering a test antibiotic called Trovan without authorisation or parental consent among children at a field hospital in the heart of the epidemic in Kano.

A similar suit was filed a couple of weeks earlier by authorities in Kano, Nigeria's largest province, which is seeking $2.75-billion from Pfizer.

"In the midst of the epidemic, Pfizer devised a scheme under which it misrepresented and failed to disclose its primary motive in seeking to participate in giving care to the victims of the epidemic," the Kano state said in its suit.

Pfizer's lawyer Afe Babalola contested the request to submit additional facts.

He later told journalists that the government case was unfounded.

"I found that there is no truth whatsoever in the claim by the federal government that my client did not obtain approval from the National Food and Drug Administration Council, Nafdac, before coming to this place," Babalola said.

"There are documents showing that before Pfizer came .. they wrote to the federal government and the federal government accepted and welcomed them," he continued.

"There was nothing fraudulent or surreptitious which my client did."

Nigerian media have welcomed the start of the legal process, and said justice should be allowed to take its course.

"Now that the government has taken the initiative and instituted a suit against the multinational company, it is time for all the parties to the case to come out and divulge all the facts," the Daily Sun said in an editorial.

Of the 200 children affected, 11 died while many more — reportedly 181 — suffered from deafness, paralysis, brain damage and blindness, according to the allegations.

The US Food and Drug Administration cleared Trovan for adult use in 1997 and the drug swiftly became established as one of the most prescribed antibiotics in the US market.

It was later associated with reports of liver damage and deaths, prompting the FDA in 1999 to restrict its use to serious adult cases.

That same year, European drug regulators recommended its suspension from the European market, a decision that has since been made permanent, according to the Pfizer website.