BERLIN - An American lawyer suing Bayer AG over its recalled Baycol drug said on Friday he would try to expand the suit to embrace cases worldwide and had also included GlaxoSmithKline Plc in the action.
``This is probably going to be one of the largest litigation matters in pharmaceutical history,'' Ed Fagan told a news conference. He declined to say how much compensation his client might be seeking.
UK-based SmithKline Beecham, before it merged with Glaxo, agreed in 1997 to co-market the cholesterol-lowering drug in the United States.
Bayer, one of the last drugs/chemicals hybrids, withdrew Baycol on August 8 because of potentially fatal side effects.
The Leverkusen-based group said on Friday it expected the number of deaths reported to have occurred while patients were taking the drug to rise to more than 52, its most recent figure.
Bayer, Germany's biggest pharmaceuticals group and the inventor of aspirin a century ago, on Thursday postponed its Wall Street listing to February as U.S lawsuits related to its recalled Baycol drug hammered its share price.
The listing had been planned for September 26.
BAYER SHARE UP AFTER WEEK-LONG TUMBLE
The company's shares dropped to a 29-month low on Thursday, having shed some 27 percent since Baycol/Lipobay was withdrawn.
Bayer said markets were overestimating the chances of the lawsuits succeeding, saying no causal links had been established between the reported deaths and Baycol. It said earlier this week chances were slim Baycol that would return to the market. By 11:10 a.m. EDT, the stock was up 0.49 percent at 33.06 euros, compared with a 3.01 percent fall on the benchmark DAX index.
In London, GlaxoSmithKline shares were off 1.73 percent at 1,823 pence.
A spokesman confirmed the company had received a lawsuit, but declined further comment.
Paul Diggle, an analyst at West LB Panmure, said he would be surprised if Glaxo had significant liability.
``I think it's a storm in a tea-cup. If it wasn't a quiet Friday in August I don't think it'd be moving the share price.''
Analysts also said Bayer's share could prove volatile in the coming weeks as the company re-thinks its pharmaceuticals strategy and amid the possibility of more lawsuits.
``Clearly the market faces a problem trying to assess the future of any legal liabilities that might crystallize going forward,'' said James Knight, analyst at Merrill Lynch in London.
``I think you're going to see speculation before the next supervisory board meeting.''
The Baycol debacle has forced Bayer to consider taking its undersized pharma unit into a joint venture without management control, or selling it off entirely. It said it hoped to present the first results of a strategic review, ordered after Baycol was pulled, to the group's supervisory board within a few weeks.
Bayer said this week that two top pharmaceuticals groups were interested in the unit. U.S.-based Bristol-Myers and Eli Lilly, Franco-German Aventis SA and Switzerland's Roche and Novartis have all been named by analysts as possible partners.
CLASS ACTION TO ``SUCK IN'' OTHER SUITS
Several suits have been filed this week against Bayer, including the one by Fagan on behalf of a resident of the U.S. state of New Jersey.
That suit and one filed by Chicago law firm Kenneth B. Moll & Associates call for the establishment of a fund to monitor people who have taken Baycol.
``This is not just about damages. They killed people. The drug killed people. In hundreds of thousands of people there's a ticking timebomb. It's called Baycol or Lipobay,'' Fagan alleged.
Fagan said his firm was about to apply to a federal court to have similar cases grouped together. The court would probably decide by November or December, he said.
``There's no question there'll be multiple lawsuits....They should get sucked into a single class action,'' Fagan said.
Some six million people are thought to have taken the drug worldwide including 700,000 in the United States.
Michael Witti, a German lawyer who worked with Fagan on Nazi slave labor claims, said there was currently no mechanism to include German and other cases into the U.S. suit.
``We will pave a way for them to take part in the U.S. case. It won't happen that the cake is divided there, with Germans and others getting nothing,'' Witti said.
Also on Friday, 53-year-old Frenchman Jean-Luc Frehel filed a complaint against Bayer after suffering muscle pains a few weeks after starting a course of Cholstat, one of the names under which Bayer sells Baycol.
Frehel filed the complaint, a step before a lawsuit, in the city of Avignon. A decision is expected on Monday on whether the prosecutor will appoint a judge and open a legal investigation.
American Home Products Corp took charges of $12.25 billion related to the settlement of liabilities associated with its fen-phen diet drug which was taken by some six million Americans. The product was recalled in 1997, after incidents of heart valve damage and other problems.
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