After nearly two decades of litigation against some of the biggest drug companies in the country, we're betting the last thing a group of individual pharmacies wanted to hear was that their claims were small potatoes.

Plaintiffs lawyers challenging a deal under which Bayer paid Barr to keep its generic version of Cipro off the market are hoping that widespread amicus support will persuade the Supreme Court to grant their petition for certiorari and resolve, once and for all, the controversy over pay-to-delay pharma deals. But history suggests they may be overly optimistic.

Two different federal appellate courts have now been asked to answer a multibillion-dollar question for peddlers of mortgage-backed securities: Can the federal agency unwinding a group of failed credit unions and the conservator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac dodge the usual time limits for bringing securities claims?