03/17/20111 - Roche Holding AG (ROG)’s Accutane acne drug, blamed for destroying James Marshall’s colon, created a “tragedy” by cutting short the entertainer’s career, actor Brian Dennehy said.

Dennehy, who testified yesterday in the New Jersey trial of Marshall’s lawsuit against Roche, said the 44-year-old actor and musician was headed toward stardom before inflammatory bowel disease linked to the drug sidelined his career. Marshall played U.S. Marine Louden Downey in the 1992 movie “A Few Good Men.”

“This is an unbelievable tragedy,” Dennehy said in an interview outside the Atlantic City, New Jersey, courthouse. “It amazes me that something like this could have happened and could have had such a long-range effect on a career that should have topped.”

About 16 million people have taken Accutane, once Roche’s second-biggest-selling drug, since it went on the market in 1982, according to plaintiffs’ lawyers. Basel, Switzerland-based Roche, the world’s biggest maker of cancer drugs, pulled its brand-name version of Accutane off the market in 2009 after juries awarded millions of dollars in damages to former users over bowel-disease claims. Roche, which has lost all seven cases that have gone to trial, contends it didn’t pull the drug for safety reasons.

Marshall, a New Jersey native who now lives in Thousand Oaks, California, is seeking at least $11 million in damages for his Accutane-related injuries, including emergency surgery to remove his colon. Jurors are hearing claims by Marshall and two other ex-Accutane users that the drug destroyed their intestinal systems.

The latest New Jersey case is Greenblatt v. Hoffmann- LaRoche Inc., ATL-l-1246-06, New Jersey Superior Court, Atlantic County (Atlantic City).