Dive Brief:
- Federal district court judge Amit Mehta has reportedly expressed concerns regarding an Amgen subpoena of a reporter for an ongoing shareholder lawsuit against the biotech.
- As BioPharma Dive has previously reported, The Cancer Letter editor-in-chief Paul Goldberg published pieces about the termination of a clinical trial for the kidney drug Aranesp (darbepoetin alfa) in 2007, which prompted a shareholder suit against Amgen for allegedly failing to disclose information about the drug study in a timely manner to investors.
- The shareholder suit is ongoing in Los Angeles. Goldberg and his attorneys are challenging Amgen's subpoena in federal court in Washington, D.C.
Dive Insight:
This case cuts to the heart of First Amendment issues, and the manner in which they can brush up against a corporation's ability to gather information for a lawsuit.
Amgen is claiming that it wants Goldberg to testify regarding how he came to learn of the study and its termination. But Goldberg's attorneys say that the company has a variety of other ways of obtaining this information, such as by issuing subpoenas to Wall Street analysts and doctors that Goldberg had interviewed. Goldberg has said that issuing subpoenas to journalists as anything other than a last resort could have a chilling effect on freedom of the press.
Legal Times reports that Mehta appears somewhat sympathetic to Goldberg's case against the subpoena, and will issue a ruling on the matter soon so that the shareholder suit in Los Angeles may go forward.