Philadelphia Personal Injury Lawyers Blog

The United States Consumer Product Safety Commission has recalled over a half a million units of Vicks DayQuil cold medicine because the packaging was found not to be child proof.

The 700,000 units were sold between September 2008 and December 2009 as Vicks DayQuil Cold & Flu 24-Count Bonus Pack Liquicaps. The packaging is marketed as child-resistant but the blister packs inside are not.

The UPC for this product is 3 23900 01087 1.

If a child was to open the medicine and ingest several of the pills they could suffer from serious health problems and death. Thankfully there have yet to be any reports of a child swallowing the medication.

This latest recall comes at not the most opportune time for Vicks and its parent company Proctor & Gamble. The company has already had 120,000 bottles of Vicks Sinex nasal spray recalled after bacteria were found in the spray. The Food & Drug Administration has also sent Vicks a letter warning them about the marketing of their products with Vitamin C.

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The drug manufacturers Pfizer and Wyeth (which is now part of Pfizer) were ordered by two Philadelphia juries to pay over $100 million in punitive damages to two women who were prescribed the hormone replacement drug (HRT) Prempro. Attorneys for plaintiffs alleged that this dangerous drug caused their clients to develop breast cancer and as a result had mastectomies performed. The defendants were found negligent in failing to warn patients and their doctors of the serious health risks while taking HRT.

Donna Kendall of Decatur, Illinois was awarded $6.3 million in compensatory damages and an additional $28 million in punitive damages. Connie Barton, also of Illinois was awarded $3.5 million in compensatory damages and an additional $75 million in punitive damages. Plaintiffs proved that Pfizer/Wyeth knew of the serious risks of its drug but failed to disclose these risks to patients and their prescribing doctors.

There are over one thousand hormone replacement therapy cases in the Philadelphia court system and all five that have gone to trial in the past three years have resulted in plaintiff's verdicts. Philadelphia juries are clearly outraged that Pfizer/Wyeth put profits over the safety of women's health. Plaintiffs assert that the drug manufacturer did not conduct adequate studies that would have revealed the breast cancer risk because the HRT drugs were producing revenues in excess of $2 billion annually.

Over six million women take HRT drugs to treat their menopause symptoms such as mood swings, night sweats, and hot flashes. Currently Pfizer is not seeking a global settlement. Plaintiff attorneys have been working hard to consolidate cases to ensure that all clients have their day in court.

Our firm has filed another lawsuit involving the drug reglan. Reglan is a drug prescribed for gastrointestinal upset, and when given for an extended period of time has been known to cause serious side effects and especially a neurological condition known as tardive dsykinesia. Our client used the drug for years without being told of the potential for developing tardive dyskinesia. The lawyers at Eisenberg, Rothweiler, Winkler, Eisenberg, and Jeck, P.C., particularly our mass tort team of lawyers, have extensive experience in handling individual drug product liability lawsuits for patients who were not warned of these side effects by the drug makers of reglan as well as the duragesic fentanyl pain patch. We welcome the opportunity to serve those who have suffered needlessly. If you or a loved one use reglan please be aware of the potential leaking of the patch which can cause serious injury or death in your family.

A Philadelphia mother recevied $2.5 million judgment against GlaxoSmith-Kline because a jury ruled that Paxil was responsible for her son's heart problems. The jury ruled 10-2 in favor of the mother citing that the drug manufacturer was negligent because they failed to warn doctors and patients of the risk to pregnant mothers.

The lawsuit is the first of hundreds to be filed in Philadelphia Court and many plaintiff lawyers are optimistic that their suits will have similar results. This particular case was difficult to prove in court because there are birth defects in 3 to 5 percent of all live births and it is hard to prove that a drug caused a birth defect in a child.

The jury's decision did not award the plaintiff compensatory damages because the jury did not find any evidence that GlaxoSmith-Kline knew about the potential side effects. Had documents surfaced that drug manufacturer knew of potential dangerous side effects but neglected to warn consumers or pull the drug off the market then compensatory damages would have been awarded.

GlaxoSmith-Kline is also battling law suits across the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom for a different reason. There is evidence that Paxil users have a higher tendency to commit homicidal and suicidal acts. Already the drug manufacturer has settled cases outside of court and has had to deal with accusations of suppressing research that showed Paxil can lead to suicide.

If you believe you have been harmed by Paxil please do not hesitate to contact our experienced pharmaceutical litigation attorneys today to discuss your potential case.

The Food and Drug Administration is investigating the safety of the popular asthma medication Xolair. The five year observational study of the long term effects of the drug have found that patients using the injectable drug may lead to strokes, heart attacks, irregular heartbeats, hypertension and other heart problems.

Xolair is manufactured by Genetech and marketed by Novartis and was approved in 2003 by the FDA for patients with moderate to severe asthma in which inhalable treatments do not work. There is no recall yet on the product and the FDA is telling patients to continue to use the medication. The current observational health study is set to end in 2012 but the FDA is working to conduct a new study that will be better able to evaluate the risks associated with the drug.

Continue reading "FDA Examining the Safety of the Asthma Medication Xolair" »

It seems like anytime you turn on the TV these days you will see a commercial with an allergy sufferer skipping through a field of daisy's after taking an allergy medication, a sad man who is suddenly cheery after being prescribed an anti-depressant, or maybe the Nasonex bee. Big pharma is a $289 billion dollar industry and big pharma spends big bucks to make sure that consumers like you want to take their new drugs. Commercials and print advertisements aggressively push drugs with catchy images, jingles or celebrity spokespersons but fail to educate patients about the risks of the new drug. In fact, when a new drug hits the market, all the drugs long-term effects are not yet known. As direct-to-consumer advertising has sharply increased over the years, Congress has taken notice. Bart Stupack of Michigan, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations is calling for a moratorium on direct-to-consumer ads during the drugs first two years on the market. Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Henry Waxman of California supports the two year moratorium as well. "It is in these first few years of a drug's life that drug companies often aggressively market their products and engage in direct-to-consumer advertising. This increases the number of consumers exposed to safety risks of new products long before those risks are truly understood," Waxman said.

As we wait to see how Congress moves on this issue, big pharma continues to expand their reach to consumers by utilizing all available mediums. For instance, on March 11, 2009, Schering-Plough launched "Don't Blow it - The Nasal Allergy Game" an online interactive game featuring Ronnie Nose, a cartoon nose. There is also a Facebook and Twitter component to this advertising campaign. As big pharma continues to pump billions of dollars a year into direct-to-consumer marketing, remember that these advertisements do not tell the whole story. Whether direct-to-consumer advertisements encourage patients to request prescriptions from their doctors, minimize harmful risks of a particular drug, or both, the progression of advertising to social media outlets such as Facebook or Twitter will only buttress misconceptions that the American consumer may have about a particular drug. The products that these advertisements are promoting are pharmaceutical drugs, not Coca-Cola, they should be presented as the former, not the latter.

Continue reading "Consumer Health and Safety or Pharma's Bottom Line?" »

On March 4, 2009 the US Supreme Court decided, in the case of Wyeth v. Levine, that a drug company is responsible for warning consumers about the dangers of their drugs even if their warning has been approved by the FDA. Mrs. Levine lost her arm after being given a drug, phenergan, made by Wyeth who failed to warn about the harms that can result when their drug is given to a patient by IV. In a 6-3 decision, the Justices of the Supreme Court recognized that state courts can and should regulate the conduct of drug companies and that state law would not be preempted. This doctrine of preemption has been pushed by drug companies for many years to avoid responsibility when they fail to warn of the dangers that could be caused by their drugs. The decision of the United States Supreme Court is a victory for consumers everywhere.