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Lawyer to Try
Settling 100 Baycol Cases
By Sitaraman Shankar
March 03, 2003
FRANKFURT (Reuters) - A German
lawyer representing patients suffering side-effects from Bayer
AG's withdrawn cholesterol drug Baycol told Reuters on Monday he
would attempt to settle about 100 cases out of court.
Michael Witti, who made headlines
three years ago when he helped win Holocaust victims compensation
from the German government and industry, said he would get his
clients the same amount of money per head paid in Baycol cases in
the United States.
"I believe five percent of
the 2,000 Baycol patients I represent in Germany are cases of
serious damage and will be settled out of court," Witti, one
of Germany's most prominent lawyers, said in a telephone interview
from Berlin.
"I will aim to get the same
deal for them as U.S. patients have got out of Bayer," he
said.
Bayer withdrew its
anti-cholesterol drug Baycol in August 2001. The drug is now
linked to over 100 deaths.
It faces some 7,800 suits over
Baycol, and said last week it had settled 450 of these out of
court for about $125 million.
Witti said he would start
attempts to settle the first cases in Germany within two months,
and expected the first payments in summer. U.S. courts tend to pay
much more in compensation cases than European ones.
"We're not aware of
settlement attempts by Michael Witti," a Bayer spokesman
said.
Witti said he was waiting only
for documents to be finalized before starting talks with Bayer.
CLASS ACTION
He said he was trying to get the
cases consolidated into a class action along with U.S. cases. A
court in Minneapolis is currently hearing a plea to treat American
cases against Bayer as a class action.
"We will try and include the
German cases in the U.S. hearing. If they do not do this on the
grounds that you need a U.S. passport in order to receive damages
from Bayer, it will be a real pity," he said.
"We think Bayer will not be
stubborn, for a very good reason: it's cheap to settle these cases
now."
"It must settle cases of
heavy damage before they become part of a class action as I
believe it could end up paying 10 times as much later," he
said.
Witti made headlines in the
Holocaust case when he helped get the German government and German
industry to pay 10 billion marks (about 5 billion euros) to slave
labor and other victims of the Holocaust.
In that case more than 10,000 of
Witti's clients were U.S. citizens, but German citizens also
became part of the class action suit in the United States, Witti
said.
"I see a clear legal
parallel between the Holocaust cases and their international class
on the one hand, and Baycol on the other," he said.
Witti said Bayer's problems might
be exacerbated by the current cold climate in U.S.-German
relations due to differences over Iraq.
"The current political
friction between Germany and the U.S. is bad for Bayer...
Anti-German lobbyists could create problems for them now,"
Witti said.
Bayer shares, which have been
battered by the Baycol controversy in recent weeks, were up 1.14
percent at 1623 GMT at 12.39 euros, at which point the blue-chip
DAX index was up 0.51 percent.
The shares have lost forty
percent of their value since the beginning of the year.
Bayer worried investors last week
by saying it could not forecast the outcome of U.S. litigation on
Baycol, and that it might consider provisions for liabilities
which analysts fear could total billions of euros.
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