Johnson & Johnson Not Liable In Motrin Lawsuit

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motrin A California jury found the drugmaker not liable in a $1 billion lawsuit involving an 11 year-old girl who claimed she was blinded by using Children’s Motrin, Reuters reports.

The decisions comes less than a month after an emotional trial in which a California couple sued the drugmaker for allegedly hiding serious adverse events from the FDA when it sought to market the widely used pain reliever, which contains ibuprofen.

Sabrina Johnson was 6 years old in 2003 when her parents gave her three doses of Motrin to fight a mild fever, but developed Stevens-Johnson Syndrome, a rare, severe allergic reaction to the children’s over-the-counter medication.

The jury voted 9-3 against liability, finding for the the 11-year-old girl and her parents in seven of eight issues, but decided that the ninth - that Children’s Motrin caused the injury - was not proven. “There will be no award,” Browne Green, an attorney for the plaintiffs told reporters. The family sought $14 million in actual damages, $103 million for the girl’s and the family’s pain and suffering, and punitive damages of $950 million.

The girl had testified that the undersides of her eyelids felt like sandpaper and that she spent months in a large cardboard box during daylight hours to avoid intense pain in her eyes.

Stevens-Johnson and toxic epidermal necrolysis, a related ailment, are very rare, with about two to three cases per million people reported annually in Europe and the United States.

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  1. For all the discourse on this in prior postings the bloggophere has gone curiously quiet now that the jury had decided.

    Interesting.

  2. Hi Sal - Not sure what to add. It sounds like the system worked well, and I am glad we still have it! Almost certainly, we won’t have it for too much longer.

    (Fighting preemption is about the right to a day in court after a judge has admitted a case as worthy. It is not about whatever outcome.)

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