LV attorney floods court with fen-phen suits

David Strow

Thursday, June 17, 1999 | 11:02 a.m.

A flood of lawsuits over the weight loss drug "fen-phen" is hitting Clark County District Court.

Seven lawsuits have been filed by Clark County residents in the past week against American Home Products Corp. and Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories Co., manufacturers of fenfluramine and dexfenfluramine (Redux). The drugs were banned by the Food and Drug Administration in 1997 after studies found evidence they could permanently damage heart valves.

Prior to the recent lawsuits, only four fen-phen liability lawsuits had been filed in Clark County since the drug was pulled from the market. In its last filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, American Home Products reported it is the target of about 2,600 fen-phen lawsuits across the country.

But those numbers will soon get a substantial boost from Las Vegas. Will Kemp, a product liability attorney with Las Vegas law firm Harrison Kemp & Jones, said he plans to introduce more than 100 separate fen-phen lawsuits in Clark County court by July. Kemp has filed six of the seven recent fen-phen cases.

Kemp is rushing the cases to court because of Nevada's two-year statute of limitations.

The drug wasn't pulled until November 1997, but the Mayo Clinic held a press conference warning about the dangers of fen-phen in July 1997. Kemp said he's attempting to avoid a legal argument that any lawsuit filed later than July would have been past the two-year statute.

"That's not to say there will be a hundred trials, but some of these people have extremely serious injuries," Kemp said. "I expect we won't see (a trial) until later this year, but probably early 2000."

The first liability trial involving fen-phen began in April in Texas, but was quickly settled out of court for $500,000. A court has yet to render a verdict in a fen-phen trial anywhere in the United States.

A Houston plaintiffs' attorney says American Home Products is in talks to reach a national settlement with former users of fen-phen that would cost the company billions of dollars. More than 6 million people took the drug to treat obesity.