LITTLE ROCK - Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel has handed over work on what could be a $600 million lawsuit against three "Big Pharma" companies to private out-of-state lawyers.

McDaniel said Friday he chose Houston-based Bailey Perrin Bailey to represent the state in a suit against Eli Lilly, Janssen Pharmaceutica and Astra Zeneca from a field of five applicants. He told lawmakers he picked BPB because it had similar experience in other states.

The suit alleges the three companies illegally marketed anti-anxiety drugs that later caused side-effects in patients who should not have been taking them. McDaniel is now the ninth state AG to sue Lilly for this so-called "off-label" marketing of its blockbuster drug Zyprexa.

McDaniel told the Arkansas Legislative Council that BPB will cover all costs in the case and receive 15 percent of any award. The case is "so large that frankly the AG's office could not handle it internally," he said. "If [the suit] is not successful we don't owe a dollar."

The Arkansas Medicaid program has spent $200 million on prescriptions for such drugs over the past eight years, McDaniel charged. State law allows for treble damages if such suits succeed.

McDaniel's announcement came a few days after the American Tort Reform Association urged state attorneys-general to adopt a voluntary "transparency code" when hiring private attorneys, LNL reported. The group wants to make such contracts biddable and reviewable as well as more transparent and accountable.

But McDaniel also said Arkansas wouldn't join a 30-state investigation of off-label marketing of anti-anxiety drugs across the industry. Janssen's drug is called Risperdal while Astra Zeneca's is named Seroquel.