Karen Barth Menzies: Working to Revolutionize How We Think About Mental Health Issues In Our Prozac Nation

Summary

Karen Barth Menzies is a prominent attorney who is fighting on behalf of consumers to obtain accountability and justice in the pharmaceutical industry and protect them from potential harm caused by medications. Her ground-breaking case against Eli Lilly & Co. has set a precedent that many other lawyers now use in similar cases.


Karen first became involved in the case against Eli Lilly & Co. after she represented a family whose son had committed suicide while under the influence of Prozac. She successfully argued that the manufacturers of the drug had failed to properly warn patients about the potential risks associated with the medication. This landmark case changed the way pharmaceutical companies label their drugs and also prompted the FDA to issue new guidelines regarding the safe use of prescription drugs.

Karen continues her battle for consumer accountability and justice in the pharmaceutical industry with her work at the law firm Baum, Hedlund, Aristei & Goldman. She is now working on cases that involve a variety of medications and injuries caused by their side effects. She understands the importance of making sure that consumers are informed of any potential risks and provides support to those who have been injured by drugs they took in compliance with their doctor's orders.

Karen Barth Menzies is a well-known consumer attorney and advocate who is dedicated to providing justice to those who have suffered harm due to unsafe or incorrectly labeled medications. Her ground-breaking case against Eli Lilly & Co. opened the door for a new level of accountability in the pharmaceutical industry and she continues to be a leader in this area. As a veteran lawyer at Baum, Hedlund, Aristei & Goldman, she works on cases that involve a variety of medications and is committed to making sure that consumers are adequately informed of any risks associated with drugs they take. Her hard-fought battles will ensure that the rights of consumers are protected and that the industry is held accountable for any harm that is caused by medications.
 

The Female Force Behind Prozac Litigations

Karen Barth Menzies is the attorney who has taken on the giant drug company, Eli Lilly, because of their manufacture and distribution of the antidepressant Prozac.

Karen Barth Menzies is spearheading the pursuit to make Eli Lilly, the manufacturer behind the antidepressant Prozac, accountable for the dangerous and life-threatening side effects that come with the drug. She is one of the leading litigators in the U.S. fighting against pharmaceutical companies that fail to warn patients of the risks associated with their drugs.
 

Karen Barth Menzies and Her Tedious Legal Process

Since her start in the lawsuit against Eli Lilly, Karen Barth Menzies has been hard at work utilizing the legal system to her advantage. Menzies has researched the effects that Prozac has on the brain and has studied thousands of internal documents from Eli Lilly.

She has taken a lot of time in courtrooms convincing juries that the drug manufacturer failed in their duty to warn about the side effects of Prozac. This has taken an immense amount of time, but to Karen Barth Menzies, it is a cause worth fighting for.

Karen Barth Menzies was named California Lawyer of the Year on March 1, the latest in a series of accolades for the 38-year-old attorney with plaintiff's firm Baum Hedlund. LawCrossing speaks with Ms. Barth Menzies about her success and what she considers the little guy's battle against the greed of giant pharmaceutical companies.
 

Even before attending law school, Karen Barth Menzies knew she wanted to be a plaintiff's lawyer fighting white-collar crime. In her mind, pharmaceutical companies are the biggest white-collar criminals around, putting profit ahead of patient safety, especially when it comes to antidepressants and their side effects in adults and children.

As the lead attorney in dozens of antidepressant violence and suicide cases involving drugs Zoloft and Paxil, Ms. Barth Menzies has made a national name for herself as an expert in the field of antidepressants knows as SSRIs, or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. She started working on antidepressant cases as a paralegal two years before she started law school. She said the cases were so complex and interesting that she returned to the cause when she graduated law school and subsequently joined Baum Hedlund as an attorney.
She is set to go to trial in May as lead counsel in a multi-district litigation which alleges that GlaxoSmithKline failed to warn the public about the dangers of Paxil.

In February, Ms. Barth Menzies tried her first criminal case, defending a boy who shot his grandparents to death when he was just 12. Ms. Barth Menzies argued that the boy should not be found guilty because his mind and judgment were altered by antidepressants. The jury agreed that the boy, Christopher Pittman, had a bad reaction to the drugs, but he did pull the trigger so the jury found him guilty. Ms. Barth Menzies has filed a motion for a new trial on jury misconduct (which she is not allowed to talk about due to a gag order). If the jury-misconduct avenue fails, she said she would appeal.
"All the experts in the case agreed that Zoloft can cause people to become psychotic," she said in her Los Angeles office after returning from the Pittman trial in South Carolina. "He was taking his medicine, and now look what happened. It's not a kid who was out on the street experimenting with illicit drugs. This is his medicine. It was prescribed to him."

The boy, now 15, was tried as an adult and sentenced to 30 years in prison. Ms. Barth Menzies said she thinks the case highlighted how unprepared the justice system is when it comes to handling children.

"How do you deal with a 12-year-old kid who is taking his medication the way he's prescribed to do it and he becomes psychotic and homicidal—a side effect that the drug company knows their drug causes," she said. "Now we're going to hold him accountable as an adult? I don't know if society is prepared to do that. And the justice system is not designed right now to come up with an alternative."

Pfizer has maintained that Zoloft is safe. After Pittman was convicted, the company issued a statement calling the case "tragic" and said that it believed that the evidence showed that the boy clearly needed medical help in the weeks leading up to the killing of his grandparents.

Ms. Barth Menzies has testified numerous times before state and federal committees on the risks of antidepressants. Last year, after she told the Food and Drug Administration that the use of SSRIs could cause some children to become suicidal, the FDA ordered drug companies to add a so-called "black box" warning to more than 30 different types of antidepressants.

In Canada, the drugs carry additional warnings of a potential increase in aggression and "harm to others." The drugs have been banned in Britain for use in children and young adults.

Ms. Barth Menzies first became interested in the drug cases as a paralegal for Baum Hedlund attorney Skip Murgatroyd, who was trying a case against Prozac. But that wasn't Ms. Barth Menzies' first job with the firm. She started as an assistant and has worked in every department of the firm—as a legal secretary, a clerical assistant in the accounting office, and a general helper to the attorneys—since she first joined it during a semester off from college.

"I thought I wanted to go to law school, but I needed money to be able to go, so I decided I [had] better work in a law firm to see what it's like, to see if I like it, to see if I want to invest the time and money," she said, adding that while she was working as a waitress, a friend told her about a possible job at Baum Hedlund. "So for $5.25 an hour, I got coffee for the partners; I made copies; I watered the plants."

She laughs and says now when people in the office complain about their jobs being too difficult, she can say "I used to have your job."

Ms. Barth Menzies said when she joined the firm, it was handling car crash litigation, which she did not enjoy. Although she admits it makes little sense, she says she is a plaintiff's lawyer who thinks people sue each other too much, which she fears will lead to major tort reform and let big companies off the hook from lawsuits and people who have legitimate cases.

Ms. Barth Menzies says she knows many people have been helped by antidepressants and her goal is not to take them all off the market. Her goals are to have drug companies admit their medicines are not unblemished super drugs and to warn doctors and patients about side effects. She said only about three to five percent of people taking SSRIs become violent, and she wants these warnings made public so people know what to look for. The drug companies say people's depression, not the drugs, makes them suicidal or homicidal.

"All you have to do is tell the doctor that this drug in some people—not many, but in some people—it might cause this side effect, so watch out. The doctors would be able to do something to stop the person in time before they kill themselves or someone else," she said. "If they would warn about it, and if they would do it effectively to the doctors, not only would they save people's lives, but they would also put us out of business."

Ms. Barth Menzies said she is "flabbergasted that now 14 years later, we are still fighting them as to whether these drugs can cause suicide or not." Her biggest fear, she said, is the increase of SSRI and other prescription-drug use in children. She cites President Bush's Freedom Commission on Mental Health as particular cause for concern because schools are giving children mental health screenings, without parental consent, and diagnosing children on the spot.

"I don't think anybody would dispute that people are over-medicated in this society, especially kids," she said. "But they're saying kids are under-diagnosed. In other words, we haven't maximized our potential profits…And according to their definition, every kid has ADHD, or every kid who is creative and a little bit smarter than his peers is going to be considered ADHD because he can't concentrate. Do you want to squelch that creativity? Then they shuffle them into some counseling, and of course, that leads directly to prescriptions. It almost always leads to prescriptions."

The fastest-growing market for psychotropic drugs (SSRIs) over the last year has been children under 5, according to Ms. Barth Menzies.

"Parents are saying, 'Yeah, my five-year-old is depressed.' And I'm like, 'About what? That "Sesame Street" was canceled?'" she said, adding that parents are often too willing to let doctors talk them into giving their children prescription medication. Ms. Barth Menzies fears the generation of people now under 25 have not learned to grow stronger from life's hard experiences because they're too numb from antidepressants.

Ms. Barth Menzies, who played basketball in college and plays most sports now, compares the litigating in the courtroom to being on the basketball court.

"Being out in front of the judge and having to think on your feet, knowing that you did all of the preparation ahead of time so that when you get in there, you've got that adrenaline rush of having to think of things off the top of your head and anticipating what the other side is going to do. It's offensive, defensive. It's knowing when [to act]," she said. "It really does feel similar to when you're competing on the court, and the excitement is there, the adrenaline rush. I think I'll keep doing this as long as it's a little bit of an adrenaline rush when I'm in the courtroom."