Advocates seek access to drug company documents.

Byline: Susan Palmer The Register-Guard

Another rights group has asked a judge to unseal documents kept secret by court order in class-action lawsuits against drug manufacturer Eli Lilly.

The documents apparently suggest the pharmaceutical company knew that its antipsychotic drug Zyprexa had serious health side effects and tried to conceal the extent of the problems from doctors and patients. They also appear to indicate that the company improperly marketed the drug for uses the Food and Drug Administration had not approved.

The Alliance for Human Research Protection argued in a brief filed last week with the Eastern District Court of New York that the documents were improperly sealed by the court and that dissemination of the information they contain is of critical interest to the public.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit agency protecting Internet free-speech rights, already had filed a brief in the case, claiming that the court had no power to restrict material already widely available on the Internet.

The documents - internal company memos, marketing materials and research - have caused a minor firestorm since The New York Times published stories in December revealing their contents. The information was originally compiled and given to plaintiffs' attorneys in class-action lawsuits that eventually were settled out of court.

The Times obtained them from an Alaskan attorney who had subpoenaed them and then leaked them to the newspaper and to mental health activists.

The documents were posted online until Eli Lilly complained and a judge ordered them taken down and the links to them removed in a temporary injunction. Federal District Judge Jack Weinstein is expected to rule soon on whether to make the injunction permanent or lift it.

Eugene-based MindFreedom - an international coalition of groups defending the rights of those with psychiatric diagnoses - was among the groups named in the injunction. Executive Director David Oaks said his group had not obtained or published the documents, but did alert its members that the documents were available.

While all of the official links appear to have been severed, anyone with a lot of disk space and capable of downloading can still access them.

In its brief on the matter, the Electronic Freedom Foundation noted that William Childs, a law professor at the Western New England School of Law, wrote in his blog that he was able to find the documents after just 17 minutes of searching.

Eli Lilly spokeswoman Carole Puls said the documents represent a small fraction of the 11 million pages provided to lawyers during litigation.

"These documents do not in any way represent an accurate view of Lilly company strategy or activities," Puls wrote in an e-mail response to The Register-Guard.

"What these individuals are not likely to show you is the millions of other pages of documents demonstrating how Lilly and its employees have worked to improve the lives of people with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder."