The litigation involved top-selling anti-psychotic drug Zyprexa. The plaintiffs claim that the drug's maker, Eli Lilly, gave inadequate warnings regarding the risk of obesity and diabetes in Zyprexa users. During the litigation, a reporter, an expert, and an attorney who was not otherwise involved in the case decided to defy the court-imposed protective order that was issued to maintain the confidentiality of certain documents.
Their motivation was both urgent and understandable: They were concerned for the health and safety of those taking Zyprexa. But their tactics were questionable:
In order to circumvent the protective order, they concocted a deceptive ruse to ensure that the content of documents produced in the ongoing Zyprexa litigation became public.
Moreover, they failed to try legal means before they resorted to illegal ones, ignoring a specific procedure that would have allowed them to challenge the documents' secrecy vis-à-vis the public in court. As I will explain, this error complicated what would have otherwise been a simple case of justified civil disobedience.
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