Nigeria, Pfizer work on drug trial settlement-lawyer

By Camillus Eboh

ABUJA, June 20 (Reuters) - Pfizer Inc (PFE.N) and Nigeria are keen to reach an out-of-court settlement over a 1996 drug trial that Nigeria says caused the death of 11 children and left dozens disabled, a lawyer for the drugmaker said on Friday.

Nigeria's federal government and its northern state of Kano sued Pfizer more than a year ago for a total $8.5 billion in damages over the testing of the antibiotic Trovan in Kano during a 1996 meningitis epidemic that killed 12,000 children.

The civil and criminal cases launched by Nigeria's authorities have grown into a tangle of unresolved petitions and counter-claims, dragging from one adjournment to the next.

Pfizer, the world's biggest drugmaker, denies all charges.

"There is a great desire, there is disposition towards settlement," one of Pfizer's lead defence lawyers, Damian Dodo, told reporters when asked if the two parties were still working towards an out-of-court settlement.

"The process is still on. It is going on on parallel lines. There is active engagement by all the parties," he said after the high court in the capital Abuja heard one of the side cases.

The court ruled that families of the victims could be heard as defendants alongside the government in an appeal by Pfizer to have a government report into the drug trial quashed.

Justice Onwuri Chikere said the families had "sufficient interest" to warrant being heard and said the case would continue on Sept. 22.