This issue has been discussed ad nauseum on the Yahoo IPIC board: FWIW, this was a comment I posted there regarding the Redux settlement:
Earlier in 1998 I had talked about the possibility of a
settlement, but recently I had been more bullish about the
liability issue being thrown out on the basis of accumulating
data. Thus I did not expect this. However, it is clearly a
positive event for IPIC. A total of $70million dollars
between now and 2006 is a very managable price for ridding
the company of the Redux cloud, the cloud that some had
predicted would push IPIC into bankruptcy. CerAxon and
pagoclone will themselves generate enough revenue over the
next few years that this pay-off will seem minor, IMO. The
settlement represents a hedge on both sides: the plaintiffs,
had they waited, might have seen their case weaken if the
next few studies continue to exonerate Redux. This way, between insurance and the payments, they
receive perhaps $100 million over time. More than they
deserve. However, IPIC is hedging against the possibility
that the long-duration subgroup might yet show some
valvular risk with Redux, and that even this 5% or so group
(100,000) could have presented a far greater fiscal
vulnerability (100,000 times 100,000 is $10 billion for
example). Furthermore, while I have hoped that the courts
would have learned from the rape of science seen in the
breast implant case, I suspect IPIC's attorneys (some of
whom were involved in the breast implant litigation) told
them that their fate rested not on facts or data, but on the
interpretation of same by juries, and thus no one could
predict a rational outcome. Someone else can compute what
$70 million spread out between now and 2006 equals in
inflation-adjusted dollars. Whatever it is, it is cheap, and
allows IPIC to move on with far more important projects.
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