O'Melveny & Myers

O'Melveny & Myers is a recommended firm in the area of Hatch-Waxman litigation for branded pharmaceutical companies. The firm acts for a number of major entities, including AstraZeneca, Amgen subsidiary Onyx Therapeutics and ViiV Healthcare.

New York-based Lisa Pensabene is the 2020 Branded Hatch-Waxman Litigator of the Year for a significant year of trial work and repeated market praise. She recently led a trial team for Amgen subsidiary Onyx related to its Kyprolis drug. The District of Delaware ultimately found the client’s patents valid following novel challenges to compound and formulation claims covering its product. Pensabene currently serves as the firm’s life sciences IP litigation head.

John Kappos is another noteworthy litigator at the firm, bringing two decades of experience in law. He is currently acting for Agilent Technologies in a trade secrets suit brought against a competitor.

New to the stars list is Hassen Sayeed, who acted alongside Pensabene in the Onyx litigation. His technical credentials are bolstered by a medical degree.

While O'Melveny & Myers is not a firm that fashions itself as a life sciences specialty shop, two of its biggest wins of the year have involved this industry, logged by two Los Angeles trial lawyers.

Celebrity courtroom ace Dan Petrocelli secured a complete defense verdict for Janssen Pharmaceuticals and Johnson & Johnson in the first bellwether trial in a California Coordinated Proceeding involving more than 10,000 claims over the antipsychotic medication Risperdal. The trial involved claims by a 24-year-old Kansas man that he developed gynecomastia from prior Risperdal use. The plaintiff was prescribed Risperdal "off-label" as a child, for severe violence and behavioral issues, before it was approved by the FDA for children. Petrocelli and the O'Melveny team also exposed that the plaintiff's claim had been manufactured after his mother saw an attorney advertisement on television and that the plaintiff did not even have gynecomastia; any enlargement of his breasts was due to fatty, rather than glandular, tissue. After a more than two-week trial, the jury rendered a verdict for the defense in less than two hours. Several more Risperdal cases are set for trial in 2018.

Richard Goetz is defending Amylin, a subsidiary of AstraZeneca, against claims brought by hundreds of plaintiffs in personal injury cases involving Byetta, an injectable medication for type-2 diabetes, in a California Coordinated Proceeding and a federal multidistrict litigation. The suits allege that Amylin failed to adequately test and monitor the side effects of the drug, and did not warn doctors or patients of the risk of developing pancreatic cancer, thyroid cancer and/or pancreatitis. The federal and state courts both granted summary judgment in the defendants' favor on preemption grounds, but the Ninth Circuit reversed to allow additional discovery, and the issues will then be briefed again. The state court order is on appeal.