Associated Press (via ABC): “NJ Jury Awards $25M to Ala. Man in Accutane Suit”

A New Jersey jury has hit the pharmaceutical company that makes Accutane with a $25.16 million judgment…

National Law Journal – “This Time Roche’s Loss to Accutane Suit Is Big, Real Big”

“This drug is awful, and the warnings were inadequate. [Roche] warned about things like pregnancy and those problems, but everything else they really ignored,” said Christopher Seeger of New York’s Seeger Weiss, one of four plaintiffs’ firms that is handling the scores of Accutane lawsuits. The others are Hook Bolton, Beggs & Lane, and Levin Papantonio — all in Pensacola, Fla.

New Jersey Law Journal – “In Retrial, N.J. Jury Awards $25 Million to Accutane User”

David Buchanan of Seeger Weiss in New York, one of the plaintiffs lawyers, says the reversal disappointed him at the time, but he was buoyed by the affirmance of Higbee’s other rulings. As a result, he says, the appeals court “provided a blueprint that will be useful in other trials.”

Buchanan says it is impossible to say for certain why the second jury returned so magnified a verdict after hearing the defense evidence the judge excluded at the first trial.

Two possible explanations: First, the first jury’s damage finding was lower than it should have been. “McCarrell’s case is one of the most serious,” he says. Second, the experience of the first trial has improved the plaintiffs lawyers’ presentations. “We’re getting better,” he says.

Buchanan says Tuesday’s verdict should send a message to the company that a settlement of pending cases would be wise. “I would hope they would acknowledge what the juries are telling them. I am hoping the message is heard.”

Law360 – “Roche Hit With $25M Accutane Verdict”

The nine-member jury found that Roche failed to provide an adequate warning to McCarrell’s prescribing physician about the risks of inflammatory bowel disease from Accutane and that that failure to warn was a “proximate cause” of McCarrell’s IBD, according to McCarrell’s lawyers.

On Monday, a nine-person New Jersey jury has found that pharmaceutical maker Hoffman-La Roche Inc. failed to provide an adequate warning of the possible condition to Andrew McCarrell’s prescribing physician, which then led to his development of chronic IBD. Mr. McCarrell, who was 23 at time he took Accutane, developed a severe case of IBD and later had his colon removed. The jury awarded compensatory damages of $25.16 million to Andy, now in his thirties.

Hoffman-La Roche faces as many as 800 cases around the country. Seeger Weiss has won 5 consecutive verdicts against Roche since 2005.

Seeger Weiss LLP is part of the litigation group working in coordination to bring these cases to court across the country. The Oregon case is expected to set the trend for upcoming cases, and gives many pain-pump victims hope for relief and justice.

Following this giant victory for pain pump victims across the country, the New York Times follows up with a piece on pain pump studies.

Washington Post: Federal prosecutors announced Thursday that they have filed a health care fraud charge against a doctor accused of faking research for a dozen years in published studies that suggested after-surgery benefits from painkillers including Vioxx and Celebrex.

Court documents indicate that Dr. Scott Reuben, an anesthesiologist, has agreed to plead guilty in exchange for prosecutors recommending a more lenient sentence of up to 10 years imprisonment, a $250,000 fine and forfeiture of assets worth at least $50,000 that Reuben received for the research.

Prosecutors allege the former chief of acute pain at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield sought and received research grants from pharmaceutical companies but never performed the studies. He fabricated patient data and submitted information to anesthesiology journals that unwittingly published it, court documents allege.

On September 16, Judge Sandra Mazer Moss of the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas consolidated all of the lawsuits filed in Philadelphia that involve Bayer’s popular prescription contraceptives: Yaz and Yasmin. Ocella, the generic equivalent of Yasmin, is manufactured by Barr Laboratories.

Recent reports suggest that these prescription medications could be putting millions of young women at risk of serious side effects, including stroke, heart attack, blood clots, deep vein thrombosis, pulmonary embolism, and even death.  A recent study published by the British Medical Journal demonstrated that birth control products containing the active ingredient contained in Yaz, Yasmin, and Ocella—drospirenone—carried a risk of blood clots nearly double that of other birth control medications.  Other reports have associated drospirenone with an increased risk of gall bladder disease, resulting in removal.

On September 14, the Food & Drug Administration released a warning to Bayer about problems found in a March 2009 inspection in the Berghamen, Germany plant where Bayer manufactures the Yaz and Yasmin birth control pills that it sells in the United States. The warning said the inspection “revealed significant deviations from U.S. current good manufacturing practices (CGMP) in the manufacture of non-sterile APIs [active pharmaceutical ingredients].”

Bayer has previously received warnings from the FDA for advertisements that overstated the benefits of Yaz and which minimized the potential safety risks associated with the drug. As a part of a subsequent agreement with the FDA and attorneys general in 27 states, Bayer began running a new ad campaign in February 2009 to correct the information conveyed by deceptive Yaz commercials.