Drug Recall Lawyer Blog

Abbott has recalled its Similac baby formula after reports of beetles being found in the product were confirmed. Millions of containers of the baby formula are involved in the recall. Abbott claims that 99.8% of the baby formula tested was negative for beetle contamination.

Since we first posted on this earlier today, our lawyers have received many inquiries from parents whose children have taken this recalled Similac baby formula. I do not think this incident, however regrettable, will lead to viable lawsuits and our law firm will not be handling these cases.

The good news is that apparently drinking the recalled formula - anyway - will not cause serious injury. The FDA has said that affected children may be uncomfortable and it may irritate the gastrointestinal tract, causing infants to lose their appetite. But ingesting the recalled formula should not cause any long term effects. Would I still be nervous if it were my child? Of course.

The Drug and Device Law Blog has an articulate rant about plaintiffs' lawyers jerking around defendants on whether certain documents produced should be deemed confidential. The core of their argument is that plaintiffs' interests in the battle over confidential documents is either for (1) sport, or (2) to shop documents obtained in discovery to the press.

There is some measure of truth to almost the entire post. But it is as if Tiger Woods told the following story: "I was looking forward to a nice Thanksgiving weekend with my family but on Sunday my wife just left. Didn't say good-bye or anything." That's a true story.

Similarly, the Drug and Device Law Blog leaves out a little fact of the story: mass tort defense lawyers are the undisputed kings of making plaintiffs' lawyers work for pure sport. Plaintiffs' lawyers in drug and device cases largely just want to get from Point A to Point B as quickly as possible. I think this is a function both of the personality types attracted to these very different jobs (and I've done both) and fundamental economics: plaintiffs' lawyers get paid for success while defense lawyers get paid for working, even if they are just creating work.

The Drug and Device Law Blog freely admits that defendants do designate too many documents as confidential because "it's hard to analyze the confidentiality of millions of documents and get every call exactly right." (Y'all do this on privileged documents too, a practice that usually goes by unchecked.) So, their thinking goes, "if one errs on the side of over-designation, the documents can be de-designated and nobody is hurt." So it is a hassle to do the job right the first time even though you billed the client $85 gazillion dollars for the document review. And the court's order didn't say, "Hey, when it doubt, just mark it confidential, we will put the burden on plaintiffs' lawyers to have to run back to me to get it straight."

Moreover, making documents public that show what drug companies are actually doing may serve plaintiffs' lawyers' interests but it also serves the public good. If you are taking a drug and the manufacturer has documents showing they are burying studies that reveal the drug has risks not fully disclosed, isn't it a good thing if the patient and the doctor read about this in The Washington Post? The fact that the documents show you are misleading patients and their doctors is not confidential. The blog post suggests the problem is that drug companies don't properly answer the charges in the media. Okay. But you can't suggest the public does not have the right to know because you don't have the time, energy, inclination or PR staff to respond.

I would have been far more okay with this blog post if after it was done suggesting plaintiffs' lawyers sadistically are creating work, it would have had something thrown in there about the fact that defense lawyers are far more guilty of this than plaintiffs' lawyers. Because, believe me, it is undeniable.

• Drug and Device Law Response
• My (Stolen) Reply Brief to the Drug and Device Law Blog

The Huffington Post has an interesting blog post about how little the government is doing in spite of the fact that MRSA - the drug resistant staff infection that kills thousands every year - is being found in random samples of raw pork, beef and chicken. The biggest culprit seems to be pork.

The CDC acknowledged the presence of MRSA in some meat but does not seem overly concerned because the levels of MRSA are low. That may well be true. I doubt anyone at the CDC would want their kids eating meat that they knew had any level of MRSA in it. I'm not sure I would want to use the "would I let me kid eat it?" standard for a recall. But the CDC tells us that there were 76 million new cases of food related illnesses that were reported - reported - in 2009 causing more than 5,000 deaths. So we need to make sure we are minding the store on food safety because we cannot rely on the food producers to balance the costs and benefits of what is safe to put on our plate.

Modern Medicine has a good post on how generic drug manufacturers have gained more market share as a result of the recent Johnson & Johnson recalls.

Generic drugs are great for consumers because of the difference in price. But make no mistake about it: we want drug companies to get patents and monopolistic profits at least for some period of time on new innovative drugs that help patients because these profits fund the research that goes into more innovative drugs and even some cures. But there is obviously a balance that needs to be struck.