AstraZeneca scored another victory in its legal battle against thousands of plaintiffs claiming that the antipsychotic drug Seroquel caused their diabetes. A Delaware Superior Court judge late yesterday dismissed a case filed by plaintiff Nina Scaife because the judge was unconvinced by one of the plaintiff’s expert witnesses -– a doctor who testified that Seroquel caused Scaife’s Type 2 diabetes. The witness, Valerie Peck, failed to rule out other likely causes of the plaintiff’s diabetes, the judge wrote. She also “improperly relied upon the temporal proximity of the plaintiff’s exposure to Seroquel and the onset of her diabetes in forming her opinion,” the judge, Joseph Slights, wrote. See here for the full opinion. The case is the third in the Seroquel litigation to be dismissed, following a Florida judge’s move earlier

this year to toss out two similar cases for similar reasons. Those cases had been filed in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida. Tony Jewell, an AstraZeneca spokesman, told the Health Blog that the latest dismissal “supports our position that as plaintiffs cases are examined…it is clear they are not worth pursuing.” Mr. Jewell added that after Judge Slights issued his opinion last night, lawyers representing another plaintiff in Delaware approached AstraZeneca offering to dismiss their case. AstraZeneca agreed to this, without settling the case, he said. The company faces another 9,000 or so lawsuits from patients who allege they developed diabetes after taking Seroquel. See here for more background. Image: Bloomberg News

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AstraZeneca Chalks Up Seroquel Dismissal in State Court