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We can’t comment on the cases because of our involvement, but we wanted to pass along this new opinion granting summary judgment on statute of limitations grounds in the Seroquel litigation.  Burrell v. AstraZeneca LP, slip op. (Del. Super. Sept. 20, 2010).

It’s worth a read.  The court concluded, for purposes of determining when the statute of limitations began running, that the three plaintiffs were chargeable with knowledge of their claims for alleged diabetes injuries as of January 2004, when the FDA mandated a label change to include a classwide diabetes warning for all atypical antipsychotics.  The court concluded:

In this case, the latest date that any of the Plaintiffs was diagnosed with diabetes was February 2, 2004….   As of that date, not only had the scientific community discovered a possible link between Seroquel® and diabetes, AZ itself had specifically warned of the potential risk in its new label and in its ‘Dear Doctor’ letters. Had Plaintiffs engaged in a reasonable investigation of publicly available sources as of January 30, 2004, each of them would have discovered facts that would have provided ‘notice of a potential (as opposed to a guaranteed) tort claim’ against AZ.”

Slip Op. at 20-21 (emphasis added).

We wish we could say more, but we can’t.