Survey response & remarks:
Reverse: 62% affirm: 30% Remand: 3% Settle: 5%
Caveat about my guess: I don’t have legal expertise so take it for what it’s worth. I believe the evidence clearly shows Amarin to be in the right scientifically and legally, but that doesn’t mean they’ll prevail. Facts, fairness and law seem to provide less reliable protection these days, and they were never completely reliable. Remand seems inappropriate, but I’m reluctant to say anything’s impossible these days. Could seem like a good idea to an appellate judge that’s a fellow traveler with Du. There are sound arguments against settlement, but there also seem to be big potential incentives for it on both sides (no price war etc.). JT has displayed strong risk avoidance in the past (e.g., unexpected money raise), making settlement seem more likely.
The technical note by Curfman, Bhat and others should strongly support the appeal if the judges are unbiased. If it’s not allowed into evidence for some reason, I expect the legal team to probably find a way to make the judges aware of it anyway.
Regarding the “500” issue (generics incorrectly claim 500 adequately represents all severely high TGs, and isn’t much different than 400, which is in the same class as TGs in the 200s, so severely high TGs are similar to moderately high TGs) : Key to this is a common problem of oversimplifying a complex phenomenon. Partitioning something into two categories with a simple threshold is very common (TGs above or below 500 for example), but there are generally problematic issues (grey areas) near the border. Night and day have very different visibility, but there’s little difference between a few minutes before sunset and a few minutes after. It would be absurd to suggest that means there’s no significant visibility difference between night and day. (Mathematically that results from imprecisely modeling a fuzzy set as if it were a crisp set.)
It is scientifically unsound to model the subgroup of the population with TG above 500, who have a wide range of TG levels that can go over 1,000, as if they all had TG levels of 500, and then note that they are similar to those whose TGs are 400, who in turn are arbitrarily lumped in with a group whose average TG level is perhaps 200. That twisted logic can lead to the false implication that a group of people with averge TGs around 200 is comparable to a group with average TGs of 800. (It’s like falsely arguing that fifteen minutes before sunset isn’t that much different than fifteen minutes after, so there’s no significant difference between noon and midnight.) Such reasoning is inconsistent with common sense and logic.
This is one of many reasons Amarin deserves to win its appeal, but that’s no guarantee they will.
I think the market, in typical fashion, over-compensated for the adverse court ruling, and Amarin remains under priced due to chance of winning the appeal, and rest of world and at least small US earnings even if they lose are, in the long run, worth much more than current price even if we lose. If we lose, the dip would be a long-term buy opportunity IMO. I don't expect a BO because, if Amarin's price they would accept went down (as I assume it must have), big pharma's would have too, by at least as much. Amarin is still not desperate IMO and big pharma is hooked on the deep discounts that accompany desperation. They get plenty of opportunity to prey on that.
