July 30 (Bloomberg) -- Pfizer Inc. won’t face a verdict over claims its epilepsy drug Neurontin helped lead a Massachusetts woman to commit suicide, after her family dropped its lawsuit in the midst of trial.

Susan Bulger’s family agreed to dismiss the suit after an anonymous donor offered to put money in a trust for her 10-year- old daughter, Regina, said Mark Lanier, the family’s lawyer. The trial began July 27 and was scheduled to run three weeks in federal court in Boston.

The suit was the first of about 1,200 involving Neurontin. The family claimed Pfizer, the world’s largest drug company, promoted the medication for unapproved uses and didn’t warn it could increase the risk of suicide until forced to do so by the government. Pfizer said Bulger had a history of drug abuse and had made six suicide attempts before taking her life in 2004.

“We are pleased to have been vindicated in this case,” Jeffrey Kindler, chief executive officer of New York-based Pfizer, said in a phone interview on Bloomberg Television today. Neurontin has been “prescribed to treat millions of patients safely and effectively for many, many years and it’s been widely studied for more than two decades,” he said.

The next Neurontin trial is set to start March 29 in Boston federal court, while another case in Tennessee may be tried earlier, Lanier said. The lawsuits claim Pfizer should have warned patients and doctors that Neurontin can increase suicidal thoughts.

‘Outrageous’

Kindler’s comments are “outrageous,” Lanier said. “All Pfizer got today was a six-month stay of execution. We have 1,200 more of these cases to go.”

The anonymous donor was a plaintiffs’ lawyer who wasn’t involved in the case, said Lanier, a friend of the donor’s. “It was the best thing for the family,” said David Egilman, a Brown University medical school professor who serves as the Bulgers’ spokesman.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration in December required all makers of epilepsy drugs, including Neurontin, to add a suicide-risk warning to their labels. Pfizer contends there is no link to Neurontin use and suicide.

The company hasn’t paid anything in exchange for dismissal of the suit, Amy W. Schulman, the drugmaker’s general counsel, said in an e-mailed statement. Pfizer “continues to believe that there is no scientifically reliable evidence that Neurontin causes suicidal behavior,” she said.

Very Difficult Case

The Bulgers’ lawsuit was “a very tough case” for the plaintiffs because of her “personal history,” U.S. District Judge Patti B. Saris in Boston said in a July 20 pretrial hearing.

Bulger’s family, of Peabody, Massachusetts, sued Pfizer and its Warner Lambert unit in August 2007, more than three years after Bulger’s husband and daughter, then 4 years old, found her body in their basement. Ronald Bulger said he gave his wife four Neurontin pills an hour before she killed herself.

The family claimed Pfizer’s marketing of Neurontin for unapproved, or off-label, uses played a role in her doctors prescribing the drug. Bulger took the drug, approved to treat epilepsy, for mood swings and arthritis pain.

Warner-Lambert paid $430 million in 2004 to resolve off- label marketing allegations involving Neurontin by the U.S. Justice Department. Pfizer said the settlement involved actions before the company bought Warner-Lambert and Bulger’s doctors didn’t prescribe the drug because of off-label marketing.

Pain Reliever

Her doctors prescribed Neurontin because it has been shown to help with pain, isn’t addictive and has few side effects, Pfizer lawyer William Ohlemeyer said at trial.

The prescriptions were “based on the doctors’ background and experience and not what Pfizer or Warner-Lambert told them,” he said.

Pfizer fell 28 cents, or 1.8 percent, to $15.75 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The stock has declined 11 percent in 2009, after falling for two years.

The case is Bulger v. Pfizer Inc., 1:07-cv-11426, U.S. District Court, District of Massachusetts (Boston). The suit is part of In Re Neurontin Marketing, Sales Practices and Products Liability Litigation, MDL 1629.

To contact the reporters on this story: Jef Feeley in Boston at jfeeley@bloomberg.net; Margaret Cronin Fisk in Southfield, Michigan, at mcfisk@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: July 29, 2009 22:11 EDT