The Waterkooler

Who do we hate more? The nicotene peddlers, the Drug Pushers, or the lawyers that make a living off of suing them?

Lawsuits over prescription drugs carry perhaps the highest stakes of all product liability litigation, lawyers on each side say. Plaintiffs' lawyers may spend years and millions of dollars to prepare for a single trial, but a victory can come with a verdict of $10 million or more.

...lawyers who defend drug companies say that the rise in pharmaceutical suits is a reflection of changes in the plaintiffs' bar, not a reflection of the dangers of the drugs.

"This is really like cattle moving around a pasture, grazing on the greenest part of the grass," said Peter Bicks, a defense lawyer at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe. "The greenest part of the pasture now appears to be, in the post-Vioxx era, drugs."