Précis This!

But will it stand up in court? June 11, 2007

Situation: Christopher Woods of New York is suing pharmaceutical company Novartis AG because, as the Associated Press delicately put it, the company’s Boost Plus vitamin-enriched health drink “gave him an erection that would not subside and caused him to be hospitalized.” Also to undergo some unpleasant surgery.

Consult the nutritional information for Boost Plus (http://www.novartisnutrition.com/us/productDetail?id=794) and you readily see that it packs a vitamin punch, all right, but still less than some multivitamins. Novartis says “BOOST PLUS Drink is a high-calorie, nutritionally balanced oral supplement … to help volume-restricted patients get the calories they need … to help gain or maintain weight.”

Mr. Woods maintains that he boosted too much, as it were (certainly by volume, if not by weight). Assuming this is the straight story, some prickly questions arise:

Question 1: Will Mr. Woods face stiff opposition via friend-of-the-court briefs from other food makers?

Question 2: Should other food and pharmaceutical company attorneys seek a restraining order that bars Mr. Woods from consuming their own vitamin-enriched products, just to be safe?

Question 3: Would someone risk suffering Mr. Woods’s symptom after consuming, say, a salad bowl full of Special K?

Question 4: Will all this publicity inflate Novartis stock prices?

One is tempted to think it will be a while before this ruckus subsides.