Celebrex Class action vs. Pfizr may proceed

"A federal judge has refused to dismiss a class-action suit accusing Pfizer Inc. of securities fraud for failing to disclose relevant data from a study it conducted about its arthritis drug Celebrex.
U.S. District Judge Anne Thompson held Monday that a 2001 article in The Washington Post — revealing the alleged concealment of the study data — "may have raised the possibility that Defendants acted with scienter, thus prompting a reasonable person to begin investigating," but did not "establish a strong inference that Defendants acted with the requisite intent."
Applying a new standard for the Third Circuit, Thompson held that the statute of limitations in securities-fraud cases begins to run "when a reasonably diligent plaintiff should have discovered facts permitting it to successfully plead a cause of action under the … Securities Exchange Act."
In Alaska Electrical Pension Fund v. Pharmacia Corp., 03-cv-1519, the plaintiffs claim that Pfizer and subsidiary Pharmacia Corp. fraudulently withheld some results of a long-term clinical study of Celebrex's gastrointestinal side effects. Pharmacia allegedly reported only the first six months' worth of results in an effort to make the drug appear safer than it truly was and caused an article to be published in the Journal of the American Medical Association."

Source: New Jersey Law Journal