Abbott Spinoff Faces New Trial Over Gay Juror Exclusion
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AbbVie Inc., an Abbott Laboratories spinoff, will face a new trial of a GlaxoSmithKline Plc lawsuit over an AIDS drug accord after a federal appeals court said Abbott’s lawyers improperly excluded a gay man from the jury.
Equal-protection rights prohibit excluding jurors based on sexual orientation, the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco said today. The jury in Oakland, California, in 2011 ordered Abbott to pay Glaxo $3.5 million for breaching the drug agreement. Abbott was cleared of claims that it sought to stifle competition over HIV drugs when it quadrupled the price of the AIDS medicine Norvir in 2003.