And still, regular readers will recall that the parties are engaged in scheduling — for a mediation — but if that effort fails to produce a settlement, these motions and counter motions will dictate the contours of what is ultimately admitted at trial, should that time come.

To be certain, this is plainly multi-billion dollar litigation (being waged by some of the best pharma legal minds on the planet). And I’ll lay out only one of about twenty newly filed documents, here — as an example. [If you are truly curious, you may buy them and download them for yourselves, at 16-cv-266 in the USDC in NJ.] Here’s a bit of that one I did download (but know that they run several hundred pages — before redactions):

…Plaintiffs’ [US Merck’s] argument that Mr. Parry’s concession that it is “impossible to quantify” the effects of corporate branding only related to “specific investments” in corporate branding, Opp. at 7, ignores Mr. Parry’s clear testimony that it is “impossible to make a one-to-one correlation between corporate brand influence and the number of prescriptions.” Ex. 1, Parry Tr. 78:12-15.

And Plaintiffs’ contention that Defendant’s statement that “Mr. Parry did not provide any specificity or data,” Opp. at 8, is misleading because it leaves out key language in the sentence, which was that Mr. Parry “fails to provide any specificity or data regarding such [prescribing] ‘trends,’” Def. Br. at 4 (emphasis added), which, as discussed above, he does not….

Now you know — onward, next to Day Two — of the non-cease-fire… cease fire. Yikes.

नमस्ते