Actos News

Las Vegas Judge Issues Sanctions Against Takeda Lawyers
May 1, 2014

A District Court judge has issued sanctions against lawyers for Takeda Pharmaceuticals in a trial currently underway in Las Vegas. In an order filed yesterday, the judge ruled that attorneys for Takeda violated pretrial evidentiary rulings nine times and “repeatedly engaged in disruptive and disrespectful behavior towards the court.” Plaintiffs in the case, Delores Cipriano, 81, of Henderson, NV, and Bertha Triana, 80, of Las Vegas, are both suffering from bladder cancer, which they claim was caused by Takeda’s diabetes drug, Actos. They are seeking a multibillion-dollar verdict against the Japanese drug maker.

According to a story in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Judge Kerry Early was responding to “repeated violations of her orders” which had “forced the plaintiffs’ lawyers to make frequent objections and requests for bench conferences during the trial.” To ensure those objections do not prejudice the jury against the plaintiffs, Judge Early will instruct the jurors before closing arguments that the objections of plaintiffs’ lawyers “were necessary to address defense counsel’s repeated violations of this court’s orders.” The jury will be told not to discuss or even consider the number of objections and requests for bench conferences made by plaintiffs’ attorneys.

In an earlier story, the Review-Journal reported that Judge Early had reprimanded two Takeda attorneys, one for pointing his finger at her and another for rolling her eyes at the judge and telling her she was getting emotional.  This behavior, however, was not in front of the jury. 

The violations escalated on April 11, when, during a sidebar, Takeda counsel made visible gestures and loud comments before the jury, forcing Judge Early to sanction Takeda’s counsel in the form of an instruction to the jurors to disregard the attorney’s offensive behavior. Plaintiffs’ attorney David Wall had asked the judge to impose sanctions for what he characterized as the “persistent misbehavior” of the defense.  The latest Review-Journal report confirms that those sanctions have now been issued.

Judge Earley will issue the following jury instructions before closing arguments:

• Due to defense counsels’ repeated and persistent violations of this court’s orders, plaintiffs’ counsel has been forced to make consistent objections and numerous requests for bench conferences in order to address these violations during trial. By continuously violating this court’s orders, defense counsel has engaged in a pattern of misconduct that creates the risk that you, members of the jury, will be improperly influenced by this misconduct.
  
  
• You should not and must not be prejudiced in any way against the plaintiffs by the fact that plaintiffs’ counsel has been forced to frequently and consistently make objections and request bench conferences. These objections were necessary to address defense counsel’s repeated violations of this court’s orders. Therefore, you are hereby admonished not to discuss or even consider the number of objections made by plaintiffs’ counsels, or the number of requests for bench conferences made by plaintiffs’ counsels because such objections and requests were necessary in order to ensure that this court’s orders were followed.

In addition, the judge has indicated that she will impose monetary sanctions for any future violations of her orders, and she reserves the right to remove any attorney from the case “should his or her professional misconduct rise to the level of intentional, extreme, vexatious or egregious behavior.”