Every day a windfall for corporations (a blast from the past)

Are you a corporation? More specifically, are you a big drug company? If so, this is your lucky decade!

Every day is a windfall for Big Pharma. After reading about drug companies paying the government to publish a study encouraging the drugging of children, I did a little more research and found a little bit about a 2004 lawsuit involving Zoloft.

A California nurse sued Pfizer because the company covered up the drug's side effects. The suit was filed under a state law that lets average people file on behalf of the citizenry, much like an Attorney General.

The evidence supporting the plaintiff's accusations was clear. But the court thunk otherwise and rejected her claim in 2005.

It's one thing to just dismiss the claim. But it's another to make her pay all of Pfizer's legal bills - which the court forced her to do.

So Pfizer gets free legal help now? Since when do we make private citizens pay corporations' legal tabs?

I'm not against "loser pays" when a corporation that files a frivolous SLAPP suit loses. But when you're talking about real public interest suits filed by real, live people, there's nothing more chilling than "loser pays." That's why Big Business made tort reform that includes "loser pays" one of their major policy initiatives in the '90s.

Our corporate overlords think the world is so mean when a court makes them pay up for their SLAPP actions - but they make everyone else pay their legal fees every chance they get.

(Source: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_2004_July_23/ai_n6122283)