J&J To Pay $258 Million For Risperdal Marketing
4 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // October 15th, 2010 // 7:07 am
A Louisiana state court jury has ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay $257.7 million for making misleading claims about the safety and superiority of its Risperdal antipsychotic and, consequently, defrauding the state’s Medicaid system, Bloomberg News writes.
The case centered on claims made by J&J and its Ortho-McNeil Janssen unit in letters sent in November 2003 to 700,000 doctors that touted Risperdal as safer than rival antipsychotics. The FDA then issued a warning letter that J&J made false and misleading claims minimizing potentially fatal risks of diabetes and overstated superiority. As a result, the jury found 35,542 violations of the state’s Medical Assistance Programs Integrity Law - comprising letters and phone calls to docs - and imposed a penalty of $7,250 for each, Bloomberg adds. The state sought a total of $351 million in damages.
This is the second trial loss for the health care giant in a state lawsuit brought over Risperdal marketing. A West Virginia judge in a non-jury trial last year awarded $4 million, which J&J is appealing. This past June, however, J&J won dismissal of a lawsuit brought by the state of Pennsylvania that charged side effect risks were hidden and state officials were fooled into paying millions more than they should have for the medicine (back story).
salesmania
Possible that the sales teams for all the “atypicals” developed mania simply by being around them too long?
pharmagossip
Is it a symptom of the sad state of affairs in Big Pharma that there are so few comments of outrage?!
In the past 22 months more than $6 billion has been paid in fines by Big Pharma.
And they write it off as the cost of doing business and add a few cents onto the price of their medicines!!
Time for a campaign?
http://pharmagossip.blogspot.com/2010/10/i-feel-campaign-coming-on.html
interested
I’m more outraged that $6 billion has been collected in the last 6 months and the government continues to underfund NIH research.
The government just wants their piece!!
Daniel Haszard
Glaxo whistle-blower gets $96 million.
The case with the Zyprexa scandal is that Eli Lilly drug company pleaded guilty to criminal wrongs (”viva Zyprexa” campaign) the Zyprexa saga was rotten through and through.
Eight Lilly EMPLOYEES got millions each as supposed informant ‘whistle blowers’.Lawyers on BOTH sides got millions and millions……most patient claimants who got sick are ‘mentally challenged’ and less able to advocate for themselves.
The Class action Lawsuits in the US had payouts of $85,000 BUT the lawyers got 45 percent and then the govt got most of the rest for having to take care of the victim/patients medical expenses.Soooo,,,,$85K turned into about $9,000 for Zyprexa claimants many had their food stamps and other state benefits taken away because of their *windfall profit* making them worse off in the end.
*
Daniel Haszard Zyprexa victim activist and patient who got diabetes from it.