Kansas City, Mo ? A judge ordered mediation between two drug makers and the cancer patients who are suing them for Robert R. Courtney’s scheme to water down cancer drugs.

Jackson County Circuit Court Judge Lee Wells issued his order Wednesday, according to Eli Lilly & Co. spokeswoman Judy Kay Moore, who declined to comment further on the order. Attorneys for both sides met with Wells behind closed-doors.

Lilly and Bristol-Myers Squibb are defendants in hundreds of lawsuits that say the companies knew or should have known that Courtney was diluting chemotherapy drugs.

The drug companies had planned to ask to be dismissed from the case on Wednesday. Wells postponed that hearing until Tuesday. It was not immediately clear when mediation would begin.

The lead lawsuit, filed by cancer patient Georgia Hayes, is scheduled for opening arguments on Oct. 7. Jury selection is planned for the week before.

Hayes’ attorney, Grant Davis, declined to comment on the mediation order, other than to say, “Everything’s on track for trial to begin.”

Courtney pleaded guilty in February to criminal charges of diluting cancer medications at his pharmacy. He is scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 5.

Court documents show that in 1998, Lilly and Bristol-Myers Squibb noticed discrepancies between the amount of drugs Courtney had bought and the amount of drugs prescribed to cancer patients. The drug companies say the discrepancy was just a problem with the collection of drug sales data.