Ex-Insys Therapeutics employee looks to ban reference to opioid crisis at trial
Jan 14, 2018, 5:08 PM
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PHOENIX — A former employee at the Chandler-based drugmaker Insys Therapeutics who is on trial for his participation in an opioid kickback scheme wants to bar prosecutors from referring to the opioid crisis.
According to Reuters, Jeffrey Pearlman, a former district sales manager at the drugmaker, filed a motion last week to ask a federal judge to “bar references at his trial to the crisis and evidence about the dangers opioids pose.”
Pearlman’s lawyers said the “rampant media attention” surrounding the opioid epidemic would sway jurors to have “strong biases against someone like Pearlman whose company sold and marketed opioids.”
“This prejudice would only be amplified if the government were to elicit testimony or make arguments regarding the opioid crisis or the over-prescription of opioids,” Pearlman’s lawyers wrote.
Related: North Carolina sues Insys | Kapoor once one of richest in Arizona
A spokesman for U.S. Attorney John Durham in Connecticut told Reuters that prosecutors would respond in court.
Pearlman was charged last year for allegedly bribing doctors with fees to participate in hundreds of speaker programs to prescribe a drug to patients who did not need it.
“Those programs ostensibly were meant to educate healthcare professionals about Subsys, yet they tended to be gatherings at restaurants of friends and co-workers who could not prescribe the product, ” Reuters reported.
The drug was Insys’ product Subsys, an under-the-tongue spray intended to treat pain in cancer patients that contains fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, Reuters said.
Seven former executives and managers at Insys, including billionaire founder John Kapoor, have also been charged in the scheme. They have all pleaded not guilty.
Pearlman’s trial is set for Feb. 7, but it could soon be delayed by at least four months.
Insys Therapeutics Inc. was first sued by the Arizona Attorney General’s Office in August. It was later sued by Massachusetts and New Jersey, but only settled the suit with the former for $500,000.