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[Definitie:] "An ergogenic aid is any substance or phenomenon that enhances performance."
(Wilmore and Costill) 
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1 1 - 0 8 - 2 0 0 5 Stacker 2 maker files for Chapter 11
NVE consumed by legal costs of ephedra pill cases
Thursday, August 11, 2005 NVE Pharmaceuticals, the one- time maker of the ephedra-based Stacker 2 pills, filed for bankruptcy protection yesterday under the weight of more than 100 wrongful- death and injury lawsuits. Sussex County-based NVE, the nation's fourth dietary supplement maker to
The government banned ephedra-based weight-loss pills in April 2004 amid outrage over more than 150 deaths linked to the substance. "The costs of defending 117 cases scattered all over the country were overwhelming and unmanageable," said Millburn attorney Daniel Stolz, who is handling the Chapter 11 bankruptcy case for NVE. "We just could not continue." The company, which still makes supplements without ephedra, plans to continue operating and selling products, Stolz said. NVE projects sales of $40 million this year, down from $70 million before the government ban. Sales of dietary supplements reach into the hundreds of millions of dollars annually. For the 52 weeks ending July 10, NVE had nearly $14.3 million in sales of weight-control candy or tablets, according to Information Resources, a market data firm. That's down 18 percent from a year ago and puts NVE in eighth place among diet-pill sellers. In its bankruptcy filing, NVE listed $1 million to $10 million in assets and $10 million to $50 million in estimated debts. World Wrestling Entertainment was the largest unsecured creditor with a $2.5 million claim; the other large creditors are broadcasters such as NBC, where NVE advertised. Stolz was unsure what the WWE debt involved. He said NVE hopes to consolidate all the lawsuits into one or two federal jurisdictions -- New Jersey and Manhattan -- and create a trust similar to asbestos- related injury cases. A comparable plan was devised in the case of another dietary supplement manufacturer, Twin Labs. In that case, certain people who sued Twin Labs will split about $19 million, or about $285,000 per case, said Ed Blizzard, a Houston attorney who is involved in lawsuits against Twin Labs and NVE. It is unclear how much money NVE might have to pay to settle all the cases against it. Blizzard said just two of the 10 cases his firm and related law firms have pending could reach $30 million. One involves a 39-year-old woman who suffered a stroke after taking the ephedra-based pills and is now a paraplegic, he said. "In just our cases, we have some tragic injuries to some very young people," he said. About 50 of the lawsuits against NVE are being overseen by a federal judge in New York. Cases against NVE and the other dietary supplement makers have been accumulating. Another New Jersey-based company, Nutraquest -- formerly known as Cytodyne Technologies -- faces more than 100 lawsuits, including one from the family of Baltimore Orioles pitcher Steve Bechler. He died in February 2003 of heatstroke, a death partially blamed on his use of Nutraquest's Xenadrine pills. Stolz said one or two lawsuits against NVE have been settled, but the details were confidential. |
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