In an order issued last week, the Court announced the discovery schedule for six Abilify gambling cases that were selected for a fast-tracked discovery and trial.
As per the order, case-specific discovery must be completed within January 2019 and March 15, 2019. Expert depositions must be finished at most by April 29, and the court would announce the trial date for Summer 2019. A case management conference has been scheduled for January 2019. Individual trial dates are not finalized yet; they will be released in a separate order.
More than 2,000 federal cases are pending with allegations that Bristol-Myers Squibb and Otsuka Pharmaceuticals marketed Abilify without warning consumers about the risks of compulsive gambling and unusual destructive behaviors. Abilify lawsuits are consolidated into multidistrict litigation before U.S. District Judge M. Casey Rodgers in the Northern District of Florida for coordinated discovery and pre-trial proceedings.
