Kentucky News

Janssen Pharmaceuticals and Johnson & Johnson concealed the harmful side effects of their antipsychotic drug Risperdal, which include stroke, diabetes and weight gain, Kentucky's attorney general claims in court.

With the March 21 disbarment of Cincinnati class-action lawyer Stan Chesley, Kentucky’s long-running fen-phen scandal is slowly winding to a close. The only remaining major issues are the fate of a $42 million judgment awarded to the former clients of disbarred lawyers Shirley Cunningham Jr., William Gallion and Melbourne Mills Jr. — and whether Chesley should have to surrender $7.5 million that he was overpaid when he negotiated a $200 million settlement with the makers of the diet drug, which was withdrawn from the market after it was shown to cause heart damage.

The Kentucky Supreme Court has voted to disbar Ohio trial attorney Stanley Chesley, a legend of the plaintiffs's bar whose reputation as a champion of the underdog was marred by accusations of greed.

A federal judge has granted Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway’s request for more time to file replies in a lawsuit filed by Merck & Co. over the state’s contract with private attorneys.

Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway filed a lawsuit Thursday against drug manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline for allegedly engaging in deceptive advertising.

In recent years, the illegal usage and sale of the opiate Oxycontin in Scioto County has been blamed for everything from pain clinics, labeled “pill mills,” in which people paid cash for prescriptions, to actual deaths. Now, Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of that drug, will have to have their day in court in Pike County, Kentucky, and not in New York, their apparent location of preference.

Oxycontin has become so pervasive in eastern Kentucky the drug was dubbed "Heroin of the Hills." Now, after years of struggling to combat the abuse of the narcotic, Kentucky officials are getting a chance to pursue the drug's maker in state court.

Yet another appeals court has rejected the idea that so-called parens patriae lawsuits--in which a state government sues on behalf of its citizens--are just class actions in disguise.