HACKARD & HOLT IN THE NEWS
Attorney is bad news for bad drugs
Lawyer's latest target is maker of treatment for diabetics
By Jean P. Fisher
Monday, May 15, 2000
Michael Hackard likes a good fight. As a boy growing up in Sacramento, he mixed it up with the neighborhood kids so often he got his nose rearranged three times.
These days, Hackard channels his adversarial urges into tweaking the noses of powerful drug companies as an attorney seeking damages for clients who say they were injured by dangerous medications.
Since turning his primary attention to drug liability cases about a decade ago, Hackard has represented among others, hemophiliacs who contracted the AIDS virus after receiving HIV-tainted blood transfusions; patients who say the diet drug cocktail fen-phen ravaged their hearts; and leukemia patients who contracted deadly hepatitis C from contaminated immunoglobulin products. Hackard now is nationally recognized as a specialist in drug cases.
His latest target: Warner Lambert Co., maker of the diabetes drug Rezulin. The New Jersey-based company in March withdrew the drug, which had attracted diabetics with its promise of a convenient, effective way of managing blood-sugar levels, after it was linked to liver damage and liver related deaths.
Hackard, 50, is spearheading legal action against Warner-Lambert and is working on more than 40 cases across the country.
The lawsuits Hackard is preparing for former Rezulin patients allege that Warner-Lambert pushed the drug through the federal approval process despite evidence that linked Rezulin with serious side effects.
Warner-Lambert agreed to stop selling Rezulin, although the company has said it continues to believe the drug's benefits outweigh its associated risks.
Hackard believes the Rezulin suits have the potential to generate a multimillion-dollar settlement.
Hackard knows it won't be easy to wrest a sizeable award from Warner-Lambert. But the long time admirer of Teddy Roosevelt also knows that charging up hills sometimes is the only path to victory.
Hackard also knows his clients will likely have to endure probes into their personal lives as the defense seeks to tie the former Rezulin patient's aliments to anything other than the drug.
One client, a teetotaling Baptist minister, had a physician ask if he were a heavy drinker because of the minister's severe cirrhosis of the liver–one side effect linked to Rezulin.
It wasn't so long ago that Hackard spent his time on the other side: helping wealthy corporate interests hang onto their money, albeit in the very different arena of real estate law.
In one high profile 1989 case, Hackard represented developers against a 340-student school district in northern Sacramento county that said the developers had reneged on a promise to help pay for new schools.
A native Sacramentan who attended California State University here, earned his law degree at McGeorge School of Law and has spent his legal career practicing locally, Hackard seemed ideally suited to help builders and developers position in the regional real estate scene. Longtime friend and colleague Mike Flaherty said he used to joke that Hackard was so well-connected he didn't practice law for a living–he went to lunch.
But when the economy tanked in the early 1990s, real estate went down with it, and Hackard's practice tapered off.
At around the same time, the father of four learned he had a brain tumor.
The tumor turned out to be benign, but following the surgery to remove it, Hackard began taking an anti-seizure medication that was supposed to keep him well. Instead, he felt terrible.
Gripped with nausea, he lost his appetite and dropped 20 pounds. He felt lethargic and began spitting up blood.
But when he went to his doctor, all the tests came back clear. Even those close to Hackard began to think what he needed was a good psychiatrist.
It wasn't until Hackard had a chance meeting with a nurse that he discovered the drug he was taking, Felbatol, had been recalled by the U.S. Food and Drug administration. Hackard hired an attorney and sued the drug maker, eventually settling the case.
Spurred on by his own experience, Hackard reinvented himself as a specialization in drug injury cases. The firm still has corporate clients, but the bulk of its time goes to drug cases.
It wasn't an easy transition. Some of Hackard's corporate attorney colleagues feel he switched sides and aren't shy about sharing that opinion.
"We get called ambulance chasers," said Ted Holt, who came to Hackard as an assistant and is now a partner in Hackard, Holt & Heller of Gold River. "Some of the Chamber of Commerce types are appalled that we do the kind of work we do now. We've suffered a tremendous amount of slings and arrows both behind our backs and to our faces."
"Most of the ribbing is in good fun," said Flaherty, a well-known corporate lawyer.
"We give him a hard time sometimes, but really it's an amazing thing that someone could change direction in mid-career and make such a success of it," Flaherty said.
Now, advocating for people who trusted that doctors and drug companies knew best is "like a mission," says Hackard's wife Lisa.
A couple of years ago, for example, Hackard was offered the chance to defend the makers of fen-phen. It would have been a lucrative case for the firm, but Hackard declined.
He eventually did get involved in the case–on the plaintiff side.
"We always want to be on what we believe is the side of right," Hackard said.