DATE: Friday, November 14, 1997             TAG: 9711140564

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A4   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Update 

SOURCE: THE NEW YORK TIMES 

                                            LENGTH:   54 lines

SETTLEMENTS MAY OPEN WAY FOR RU-486

Introduction of the French ``abortion pill'' in the United States has been held up in part by several lawsuits.

The settlement of several lawsuits concerning the French abortion pill, mifepristone, could lead to new investment for the troubled effort to sell the drug in this country.

While it remains unclear whether the drug will win final approval by the Food and Drug Administration, or who will manufacture it, the settlement of the lawsuits resolves a tangled business dispute from the brief moment when it seemed to be a sure-fire commercial success.

A Los Angeles investment group, the Giant Group, originally sought to invest $6 million for a 26 percent share in the mifepristone project last year after an advisory panel to the Food and Drug Administration recommended that the drug, known as RU-486 in France, be found safe and effective for ending pregnancies.

In October 1996, after its investment offer was rejected, Giant filed fraud charges against Joseph D. Pike, the businessman handling the project, and the Population Council, the nonprofit group that holds the U.S. patent to the drug and chose Pike to market it.

The lawsuit said Pike had mishandled the $13 million he raised for the project. The litigation caused a furor among abortion rights advocates by disclosing that Pike - who was chosen to handle mifepristone based on a long record of working with the Population Council on marketing intrauterine contraceptive devices - was a disbarred lawyer who had been convicted of forgery in a 1985 North Carolina real estate deal.

Pike then sued Giant for defamation. Wednesday, in settling both lawsuits, Giant had only praise for him, saying: ``We applaud the efforts of Mr. Pike in laying the groundwork that resulted in the FDA's preliminary approval of this very important drug. In the heat of battle and due to some misunderstanding, the parties made statements about one another which they subsequently determined were inaccurate.''

The financial terms of the settlement were not disclosed.

Giant's litigation was an important turning point in the convoluted struggle over the abortion pill. Roussel Uclaf, the French company that developed the drug, donated its U.S. patent rights to the Population Council in 1994, under heavy pressure from the Clinton administration and feminist groups, to give American women access to a drug long used in Europe.

Roussel Uclaf, a subsidiary of Hoechst of Germany, refused to sell its drug in the United States because of liability concerns and fears of a boycott by anti-abortion groups, which oppose the use of the drug.

After Giant's lawsuit was filed, the Population Council sued Pike. That lawsuit was settled in February when Pike sold his controlling interest. KEYWORDS: ABORTION PILL RU-486

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