Richard Zitrin, the founder of the Center for Applied Legal Ethics at the University of San Francisco, answers my question in a terrific Op Ed in The Los Angeles Times: From Zomax and Halcion in the 1980s to shredding Firestone tires and GM gas-tank fires in the 1990s, to Vioxx and Zyprexa today, when lawyers cut secret deals behind the public's back, what we don't know can and does hurt us. The civil justice system belongs to all of us, and no one should be allowed to use it to keep the public in the dark. Ironically, we won't know the full public health impact of Zyprexa unless the information about the settlements is unsealed. Since more than 28,000 claimants received payments from Eli Lilly, it appears to be quite substantial. Since state governments will be far less willing than individual defendants to agree to sealing documents in exchange for better settlements, this new round of litigation is likely to unseal any still secret papers on Zyprexa and the other anti-psychotics.