KANSAS CITY, KAN. ? A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit alleging the family of a victim of pharmacist Robert Courtney’s drug-dilution scheme was pressured into accepting part of a $73 million settlement with two drug companies.

U.S. District Judge John Lungstrum ruled the complaint filed by Jerome S. Tilzer, of Leawood, Kan., on behalf of himself, his late wife’s estate and their two children was improperly brought in federal court.

The suit, which was filed late last year in federal court in Kansas City, Kan., alleges that the law firms of Davis Bethune & Jones and Davis Ketchmark & McCreight pressured the family into agreeing to the settlement, failed to pursue its claims competently and diligently, and engaged in conflicts of interest and self-dealing.

The law firms denied the charges and said the family voluntarily agreed to participate in the settlement. The Tilzer lawsuit said the family’s share of the drug company settlement came to $308,000.

Tilzer indicated he would refile the lawsuit in another court.

The firms accused in Tilzer’s suit represented hundreds of plaintiffs in lawsuits against Eli Lilly and Co. and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., which made the principal chemotherapy drugs that Courtney admitted diluting.

Courtney is serving a 30-year prison sentence after pleading guilty in early 2002 to 20 counts related to his dilution of 158 chemotherapy doses of the drugs Taxil and Gemzar, which he prepared from March 2001 through June 2001 at his Kansas City pharmacy for 34 patients, including Tilzer’s wife. Rita Tilzer died Jan. 6, 2002.

But Courtney admitted in his plea agreement that the dilution scheme was much larger, possibly affecting as many as 4,200 patients and 98,000 prescriptions.