Glaxo could face potential liability in "the tens of billions of dollars," said Barry Knopf, a plaintiff's lawyer and partner in the New Jersey law firm of Cohn Lifland Pearlman Herrmann & Knopf.

"If the increased risk of cardiac death is as high as (the study) suggests, it should be possible to draw the connection to cardiac events" among people taking Avandia, "especially patients who had not had previous heart disease or heart attacks," he said.

"There is definitely an increased risk for heart attacks, the question is how great it is," said Weitz, whose firm also represents thousands of plaintiffs in cases against Merck & Co Inc. involving the withdrawn painkiller Vioxx.

Glaxo CEO Jean-Pierre Garnier said on Wednesday it was too early to say whether Avandia would be the subject of product liability lawsuits, although he was not aware of any yet.

Speaking to reporters after the company's annual meeting in London, Garnier said he was confident the full data would vindicate the drug's safety profile.

Glaxo, Europe's biggest drugmaker, has said it strongly disagreed with the conclusions of the New England Journal of Medicine study, which it said were based on incomplete evidence and questionable methodology.

Avandia is Glaxo's second-biggest seller, bringing in nearly $3.2 billion last year. Most analysts have said they do not expect the drug to be pulled from the market.

Shaojing Tong, a pharmaceuticals analyst at Mehta Partners in New York, said he expected Glaxo's liability would be limited because of data already in Avandia's package insert label about heart risks.

"We are just going to have to wait to see what develops in the science," he said. "It is very early in the game in this case."

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