Steven Brill’s comprehensive report “America’s Most Admired Law Breaker” chronicles Johnson & Johnson’s Risperdal marketing strategies that let to the 2013 $2.2 billion settlement with the Department of Justice and concludes with the first plaintiff’s trial in February of 2015.
The Legal Intelligencer reports: “Three weeks before the latest Risperdal case was tossed out midtrial, one of the jurors initially tasked with evaluating the claims collapsed while a plaintiff's expert was testifying on the stand.”
Penn Record reports: “The first Risperdal lawsuit to see the inside of a Philadelphia courtroom since a landmark $70 million plaintiff verdict in July was recently dismissed just 11 days into trial proceedings.”
Bloomberg reports: “A $70 million verdict won by a Tennessee teenager who blamed Johnson & Johnson’s Risperdal drug for causing him to grow female breasts dwarfs awards to other users of the antipsychotic medication who suffered the same side effect.”
LexusNexus reports: “After a three-week hiatus for the production of newly discovered defense data about the safety of Risperdal and three more days of testimony, a Pennsylvania state court jury on Dec. 11 found that Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc. and parent company Johnson & Johnson failed to warn a physician about the risk of gynecomastia to a 12-year-old boy and awarded the plaintiff compensatory damages of $500,000.”
The Toronto Star reports: "A medical journal article co-authored by SickKids hospital’s top pediatrician was manipulated by a drug company and understated the risks of a powerful antipsychotic used to treat kids with behavioural problems, the former head of the U.S. drug regulator alleges."
Reuters reports that a jury “found that Johnson & Johnson's Janssen Pharmaceuticals failed to warn that antipsychotic drug Risperdal could cause male breast growth, in a case filed by a young man who had taken the drug, but it awarded no damages after finding no direct link to the man's condition.”
The New York Times reports “Johnson & Johnson has agreed to pay more than $2.2 billion in criminal and civil fines to settle accusations that it improperly promoted the antipsychotic drug Risperdal to older adults, children and people with developmental disabilities.”
Forbes reports on the status of the tort: “Records from the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas reveal more than 3,000 new Risperdal lawsuits were filed in the first three months of 2017, driving up the total number of filings in this mass tort program to more than 5,500.”
Reuters reports: “A U.S. jury on Friday awarded $70 million to the family of a boy who developed breasts after taking Johnson & Johnson unit Janssen Pharmaceuticals' antipsychotic drug Risperdal.”
Penn Record reports on the third plaintiff victory in the Risperdal tort, and discusses Judge Arnold New’s decision that punitive damages cannot apply in the Risperdal cases. “ Though Janssen (a Johnson & Johnson subsidiary) is a Pennsylvania corporation, New stated the marketing and development for Risperdal, along with all relevant Food and Drug Administration correspondence regarding it, was addressed to Janssen’s principal business location in New Jersey – and was therefore bound by that state’s Product Liability Act.”
Forbes contributor Emily Willing ham writes "Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a Johnson & Johnson company that markets this drug as Risperdal, has been accused of hiding evidence back in 2003 that would have alerted clinicians and regulatory authorities to the connection among risperidone, increased prolactin, and gynecomastia."
New Brunswick Today reports: “In two lawsuits alleging that Johnson & Johnson’s antipsychotic drug Risperdal caused boys to grow female breasts, a biochemist for the company testified that the Food Drug Administration (FDA) was never given an internal analysis showing a link between the two.”
The Wall Street Journal reports on the first Risperdal case to go to a jury following the $2.2 billion settlement with the Department of Justice in 2013: “In a setback to Johnson & Johnson, a Philadelphia jury decided the health care giant must pay $2.5 million in damages for failing to warn that its Risperdal antipsychotic could cause gynecomastia, which is abnormal development of breasts in males. The lawsuit was brought by the family of an autistic boy who took the drug in 2002 and later developed size 46 DD breasts, according to a lawyer for the family.”
A press release for the Department of Justice announces “Global healthcare giant Johnson & Johnson (J&J) and its subsidiaries will pay more than $2.2 billion to resolve criminal and civil liability arising from allegations relating to the prescription drugs Risperdal, Invega and Natrecor, including promotion for uses not approved as safe and effective by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and payment of kickbacks to physicians and to the nation’s largest long-term care pharmacy provider.”