Abuja — The solicitor General of the United States of America has filed a suit before their Supreme Court not to hear the appeal instituted by Pfizer against the ruling of the Court of Appeal below that the pharmaceutical company could be sued in the US for the deaths of the Nigerians children which allegedly resulted from the use of the anti-biotic Trovan in a 1996 clinical trial.

The suit is filed in response to the apex court's order inviting the solicitor General to express the views of the United States on whether jurisdiction under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) can extend to a private actor based on alleged state action by a foreign government where there is no allegation that the government knew of or participated in the specific acts by the private actor claimed to have violated international law.

Secondly, whether, absent state action, a complaint that the private actor has conducted a clinical trial of a medication without adequately informed consent can surmount the "high bar to new private causes of action" under the Alien Tort Statute that this court can as well recognize.

In the statement filed by the Solicitor General, it said among others that the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) provides that federal "district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States."

The statement added that petitioner is a pharmaceutical company and the petition involves two lawsuits, brought under the ATS that arise out of petitioners testing of an experimental antibiotic during on epidemic of bacterial meningitis in northern Nigeria in March and April of 1996.

Respondents are the plaintiffs in the two lawsuits (Nigerian children and their guardians or estate representatives) who reside in Nigeria and alleged that they were subjects in petitioner's drug test.

Respondents allege that when petitioner's employees in Connecticut learned of the epidemic in Nigeria, they quickly developed a plan to test Trovanfloxacin Mesylate (marked as "Trovan") on children stricken with bacterial meningitis.

The statement went further to add that Nigeria's government allegedly facilitated the test by providing a letter requesting that petitioner export Trovan to Nigeria, a letter required by US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a condition of export.

The Nigerian government also allegedly gave petitioner control over two wards at the infections Diseases Hospital in Kano, Nigeria, in which to carry out the testing. Respondents allege that the Troval test was jointly administered by 3 US physicians sent by petitioner from Connecticut, and by Nigerian physicians and nurses whom the Nigerian government assigned to assist them.