Drug Recall Lawyer Blog

On Monday, a U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation assigned all DePuy Pinnacle hip implant recall lawsuits pending in federal courts nationwide to Judge James E. Kinkeadein in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas.

The whole idea of the MDL process confuses victims? Are the DePuy claims a class action lawsuit?

The answer is the DePuy hip claims are "sort of" a class action lawsuit. The federal cases will be consolidated in Texas for what is called core discovery - interrogatories (written questions) to DePuy, depositions of key DePuy witnesses and experts on both sides, and other discovery procedures to determine the facts of these lawsuits. Typically, the MDL judge may preside over a few trials to help both sides better understand the value of the cases. If there is not a global "class action settlement" at that point, the cases are sent back to their home state for specific discovery and trial.

What is the settlement value of these DePuy hip implant cases? Anyone who answers this question definitively is not being entirely honest - at this point, no one really knows. But DePuy/Johnson & Johnson have set aside almost $1 billion to pay these claims and, ultimately, I don't think is going to cover it. Many of these cases have trial values that are worth millions of dollars. So are high six figure and seven figure DePuy settlements likely? I think so. But only time will tell.

Do you have a DePuy Pinnacle hip implant? Get more information at 800-553-8082 or get a free online consultation here.

Companies need to do a better job of warning about the risk of its products. Often, then don't warn because it would hurt sales of the drug or device.

But warning are not always as simple as plaintiffs' lawyers make it out to me, either, as the Archives of Internal Medicine points out in a research letter published online.

This does not change my view that drug companies' repeatedly intentionally fail to properly warn doctors and patients about the risk. But there is a bit of nuance going on in some cases... that we sometimes try to ignore.

Alas, the good news for Johnson & Johnson on this blog ends here. A Pennsylvania jury found J&J responsible for not properly warning of Motrin's risks and ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay $10 million to a young girl and her family.

The girl took Motrin 11 years ago as an infant and was blinded in one eye and suffered burns over 84 percent of her body.

Nobody is saying the Motrin should be recalled or even that it is anything other than a quality drug. But the jury specifically found J&J negligent in failing to provide a proper warning about Children’s Motrin’s risks. J&J did not warn that ibuprofen, can trigger a severe allergic reaction. J&J's failed defense: it was a 1 in 25 million shot.

Johnson & Johnson. Drug Recall Lawyer Blog. It rarely ends well.

But there is some good news for J&J. Johnson & Johnson plans to introduce four promising new drugs this year to treat: (1) AIDS, (2) prostate cancer, (3) hepatitis C and (4) strokes. The sale of these drugs should be worth billions of dollars in annual revenue.

Johnson & Johnson has been a train wreck lately. They really have. Maybe I'm just nostalgic but I really think J&J can be a great company again. Here's hoping these drugs have been well tested and can really make a difference for patients and Johnson & Johnson.

Johnson & Johnson is back on the recall wagon again, issuing a recall for the HIV drug Prezista in Austria, Germany, Ireland and the United Kingdom. Why the recall? Usual drill - an odd musty odor in the drugs from the shipping pallets. Maybe there would be some wisdom in buying new shipping pallets at this point.

I have taken more than my fair share of swipes on this blog at Johnson & Johnson. I'm sure my objectivity is discounted given the name of the blog: Drug Recall Lawyer Blog. Fair enough. But when the Wall Street Journal is mocking a pharmaceutical company, it is like Charlie Sheen telling you that you are out of control.

The FDA has put forth proposed guidelines for implementing the salient portions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (“PPACA”) that requires certain restaurants (20 or more locations) and vending machines to disclose nutrition information.

Critics like Walter Olson, Wes Siegner and Susan J. Matthees are upset by the impact this is putting on small businesses. Although I think a restaurant with 20 locations is a little bigger than a small business, I get their point. No doubt, there are unnecessary burdens that government places on small businesses.

But I think the world is changing and things need to change with it. Obesity is not a problem you can legislate directly. But indirectly maybe by requiring people serving us food to tell us what it is? I'm in favor of it and I think in 20 years we will be amazed it was any other way.

A Chantix murder/suicide lawsuit has been filed in Pennsylvania alleging that Chantix caused a man to kill his wife and then himself. The victims' families claim there was not an adequate warning that Chantix could cause this extreme level of aggressive behavior. Obviously, the claim is that Chantix was a causal factor in the murder suicide.

Continue reading " Chantix Murder/Suicide Lawsuit " »

Abnormal Use interviewed University of Maine School of Law professor Jennifer B. Wriggins in a blog post last week. Professor Wriggins is best known for her book "The Measure of Injury: Race, Gender, and Tort Law" which talks about how tort law does not provide full redress for injuries to women.

Professor Wriggins was asked by Abnormal Use, "What rule or concept in modern torts or products liability jurisprudence do you believe is the most outdated, and why?"

Now that is a really good question. My first answer would probably be contributory negligence which is also touched on in this interview. Professor Wriggins said she thought the most antiquated idea might be not telling the jury of the existence of liability insurance even though the likelihood is that most of them know or suspect the defendant has insurance:

One rule that strikes me as possibly outdated is the rule that juries are not allowed to learn about liability insurance policies. Even when a case involves an auto accident, and auto insurance is mandatory in a state (as it is in almost all states), so that jurors who are car-owners (probably most jurors) know that there is likely to be insurance, jurors are not supposed to know about insurance. I understand that it is important for the liability and damages issues not to be affected by the presence or absence of insurance, but I think it is very likely that jurors think about insurance anyway. I would want to think about this more before advocating it, but perhaps we should just give jurors the insurance information and tell them it should be kept separate from the liability and damages determinations. If they are hypothesizing about insurance and taking it into account anyway, then giving them accurate information should not hurt the process. I can see both sides of this, but I think we are probably deluding ourselves if we pretend jurors don’t know and aren’t thinking about the existence of liability insurance.

Jurors' first question after a trial is often, "What's the deal, didn't this guy have insurance?" Jurors expect people to have insurance but they also expect information. If after a weeklong trial no one has mentioned insurance, jurors can easily begin to conclude that there is something special about the case and the defendant might not have insurance.

I think I agree with Professor Wriggins' premise - which even she does not seem 100% sure about - but I have not given it a lot of thought. Why? The fact that we don't tell juries about insurance always seemed like my poor vertical leap: something I accepted and never thought would change.

American Regent is recalling a Caffeine & Sodium Benzoate Injection lot because some of the vials contain visible particulates. The concern is floating particulates may include disruption of blood flow within small blood vessels in the lung, localized inflammation and granuloma formation as well as concerns that the body will react poorly to foreign particles as it often does.

Hospitals, emergency rooms, and other health care providers are being told they should not use this lot and should immediately quarantine any product for return.

The FDA information is here.

It has otherwise been a thankfully slow drug recall week with only one other drug recall.

Nine plaintiffs filed a motion in the DePuy recall MDL saying that, for all of the legal nuances, "Hey, keep us out of the MDL because we are getting old and don't want to wait forever for this." The MDL panel judge said that while she appreciates the concern of plaintiffs of advanced age and their desire for quick resolution of these lawsuits, these argument should be taken up by the transferee judge, who is "invested with wide discretion to structure pretrial proceedings to accommodate the needs of all parties" to the Depuy lawsuits.

You can read the order here.

Bristol-Myers Squibb issued a recall yesterday for a single lot of its blood thinning drug Coumadin. The recall affects certain 5-milligram Coumadin tablets that expire September 30, 2012. The recall came after an oversized tablet.

My dad ended up in the hospital once for a Coumadin overdose. But it wasn't Bristol-Myers fault. My dad got the amount mixed up in his head and was taking like four times the recommended dose. So he started bleeding like crazy. (We still played tennis that weekend.)

In just an hour, the FDA's Office of Compliance, Division of New Drugs and Labeling Compliance (DNDLC) will present a webinar entitled, "Marketed Unapproved Drugs." The webinar will discuss (1) the history of drug regulation in the United States, (2) the public health risks associated with marketed, unapproved drugs and FDA's Unapproved Drug Initiative, (3) and will identify tools to assist in determining the approval status of prescription drug products.

No word yet on whether Johnson & Johnson will require everyone at J&J who has ever even heard the word "Topamax" to attend.

Okay, that was a weak effort at a joke. I was trying to slide in a "marketing Topamax for everything but the common cold" jab but it does not really fit. You sometimes can't fit in the joke with the story. But checkout the webinar.