Stephen Sheller Helps Government Recover Record $1.4 Billion Settlement :Lilly, Zyprexa and whistleblowers

Stephen Sheller, attorney:


PHILADELPHIA, PA (Jan. 15, 2009) -- Pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly & Company (Lilly) will pay federal and state governments more than $1.4 billion to remedy a wide-ranging, off-label marketing scheme for its prescription drug, Zyprexa. This settlement is the largest qui tam settlement in the history of the False Claims Act.



Sheller, P.C.'s Founder and Managing Partner, Stephen A. Sheller, represented the whistleblowers and filed the first Complaint in the case in February 2003. Today nearly six years later, the Department of Justice announced that it settled with Lilly the allegations that six former Lilly drug marketing representative whistleblowers brought to Sheller.

Lilly will pay more than $1.4 billion for its illegal off-label marketing of its antipsychotic drug, the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania announced. Zyprexa is Lillys top-selling drug with worldwide sales of nearly $40 billion since its approval in 1996.


In today's settlement, Lilly will pay $800 million in civil penalties and plead guilty to criminal charges, paying an additional $600 million fine. The six whistleblowers who brought the Complaint against the drug company will share in approximately 18 percent of the federal and qualifying states recoveries, Sheller said.