Jury Rules In Merck's Favor in Fosamax Trial

A New Jersey jury ruled in favor of pharmaceutical company Merck & Co.in a Fosamax femur fracture trial in Trenton on April 29. The Plaintiff claimed its Fosamax osteoporosis treatment caused her femur to fracture spontaneously while she was gardening. The case was Glynn v. Merck & Co., 3:11-cv-05304, U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey.

 

Merck, which is the second-largest pharmaceutical company in the US, is facing more than 3,300 lawsuits claiming that it ignored signs that extended use of bisphosphonates such as Fosamax caused femurs to deteriorate in some patients. Another 1,230 cases allege that Fosamax caused similar fractures in jaws.

 

Bernadette Glynn, 58, sued Merck over claims the company, based in Whitehouse Station, New Jersey, was aware Fosamax might cause brittle bones and increase fracture risks years before the drug was made available to the public. The case was seen as a bellwether for how other cases might be resolved.  

 

At the start of the three-week trial, Merck’s lawyer, Chilton Varner, said consultants’ early warnings about the drug were “theoretical” and that early studies showed people who took Fosamax instead of a placebo had fewer fractures.

 

Glynn claimed Fosamax weakened her femur over a seven-year period, causing the thigh bone to snap in April 2009, when she bent over in her garage to pick up a frog-shaped lawn ornament while gardening.

 

Glynn’s leg was repaired with surgery and the use of rods, according to her complaint. She and her husband, who sued in September 2011, appeared in court on April 9 with their children. She has never had osteoporosis and was prescribed the drug to address low bone-mass density, Pennock during the trial.

 

The jury ruled out Fosamax as a cause. Instead, the jury ruled that Glynn’s femur fracture was consistent with a traumatic injury

Fosamax, which was approved for sale in the US in 1995, generated sales of up to $3 billion a year until patent protection lapsed in 2008.

 

Fosamax, its generic equivalent and other similar bisphosphonate drugs are prescribed to treat osteoporosis. In 2010, a study published in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research found that the drug, approved in 1995, could be linked to an increase in femur fractures.

 

Nationwide Fosamax lawsuits were categorized into two different federal pretrial case consolidations for efficiency purposes. Cases involving alleged femur fractures are handled in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey (MDL-2243). Lawsuits related to Fosamax’s alleged jaw death side effects are being handled in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (MDL-1789).

 

J&J Wins Its First Trial Over ASR

Johnson & Johnson gained a major victory in defending its subsidiary DePuy. The behomoth corporation succesfully defended at trial an Illinois woman’s claim she was harmed by a defectively designed metal-on-metal hip implant. The case is Strum v. DePuy, 2011-L-9352, Circuit Court of Cook County (Chicago).

The jury of seven women and five men in state court in Chicago deliberated for slightly more than a day before returning its verdict in favor of DePuy Orthopaedics Inc. Plaintiff Carol Strum’s lawyers had asked the jury for an award of at least $5 million.

Jurors had sent a note during the deliberations to Cook County Circuit Judge Deborah Mary Dooling, who presided over the five-week trial, asking if they must be unanimous in their verdict. It appears that the jurors could not reach a unanimous verdict as polling of the panel after the verdict revealed that four jurors wanted to side with the injured Plaintiff.

Strum’s case was the second to go trial of almost 11,000 filed in the United States. The J&J unit was hit with a $8.3 million verdict in compensatory damages by a Los Angeles jury that found the design of its ASR XL hip implant was defective and that the company had properly warned of associated risks. The jury rejected punitive damages in that case.

Johnson & Johnson, based in New Brunswick, New Jersey, is the world’s largest seller of health-care products. J&J recalled the implants in August 2010 after an estimated 93,000 were sold because it said 12 percent failed within five years. Data last year showed 44 percent failed in Australia within seven years. Analysts have said the cases could cost J&J billions of dollars.

Details of the Case

The Plaintiff, Carol, Strum, was a 54-year-old nurse, who had an ASR XL implanted in her in 2008. It was replaced three years later. While her attorneys told jurors the chromium and cobalt implant shed metal into her body, poisoning tissue and sending metal ions into her blood stream, defense lawyers argued Strum had a hyper-sensitivity to the implant and that she got no pain relief when it was replaced with a different device. Defense attorneys also argued that DePuy’s product was not defectively designed.

Needless to say, the jury rejected Strum’s request that they impose punitive damages.

About 500 of the cases against DePuy are pending in Illinois. It is expected that at least one more case in Illinois will try this year

The verdicts are now evened up: one for the plaintiffs and one for the defendants in the "Bellwether

Trials". The Bellwether Trials are designed to gauge the settlement ranges on the remaining 11,000

cases still pending. Since each side already has a victory under its belt, there is sure to be more

cases brought in front of juries to see exactly where the public's perception is as to DePuy's liability

in the timing of the recall.

Lawsuits Against DuPont over C8 Exposure Consolidated Into an MDL

Researchers have found a “probable link” between the toxic chemical C8 and many health conditions and diseases.

What Is C8?

C8 is a chemical also known as perfluorooctanoate acid, or PFOA. It is a processing agent involved in the manufacturing of Teflon and other non-stick cooking surfaces, water-resistant clothing, oil-resistant paper packaging, and other products. Massive amounts of C8 were used at DuPont’s Washington Works plant, which is located in Parkersburg, West Virginia. Parkersburg is about 70 miles due north of Charleston, West Virginia. The products have been manufactured at DuPont’s plant since the 1950s. In 2002, local consumers detected elevated levels of C8 in drinking water.

Unfortunately, large amounts of C8 were emitted from the plant, which contaminated groundwater in West Virginia. DuPont also disposed of large amounts of C8 in landfills along the Ohio River, which contaminated drinking water in the Mid-Ohio Valley.

Who Was Exposed to C8?

Those who may have been exposed to C8 drank contaminated water for at least one year before December 3, 2004, in any of the following six water districts (or private wells within these districts):

• Little Hocking, Ohio
• Lubeck Public Service District, West Virginia
• City of Belpre, Ohio
• Tuppers Plains, Ohio
• Mason County Public Service District, West Virginia
• Village of Pomeroy, Ohio

Previous Litigation

DuPont has already agreed to settle a massive C8 class action lawsuit involving more than 80,000 people who drank contaminated water in Ohio and West Virginia. There were many conditions of the settlement. DuPont agreed to phase out the use of C8 and install a state-of-the-art water treatment facility. Today, levels of C8 are almost undetectable in the drinking water.

As part of the settlement, DuPont also agreed to create a panel of three epidemiologists to investigate “probable links” between C8 exposure and health complications, such as cancer and birth defects. The panel was created in 2005. The panel has found many “probable links.”

Another requirement in the settlement is that DuPont must pay up to $235 million to establish a health monitoring program to evaluate people who may be at risk of developing any of the health complications discovered by the C8 Science Panel. DuPont officials say that the program “will extend many years into the future.”

Even if you were included in the previous class action settlement, you can still hire a lawyer to represent you in an individual personal injury claim against DuPont. The individual claims are separate from the class action lawsuit. In fact, in April 2013, 26 cases pending in the Southern Districts of Ohio and West Virginia have been consolidated and centralized in the Southern District of Ohio in front of Judge Edward Sargus.

Health Effects From Exposure to C8

The Epidemiologists studying the issues have found “probable links” between C8 and many severe, life-threatening side effects. These side effects include:

• High cholesterol
• Kidney cancer
• Testicular cancer
• Thyroid disease
• Inflammatory bowel disease (ulcerative colitis)
• Preeclampsia — high blood pressure (hypertension) among pregnant women
• And more

In the fourth and final report, issued on October 29, 2012, researchers from the 3-member C8 Science Panel found a “probable link” between exposure to the toxic chemical and high cholesterol. The researchers found that ailments and diseases such as coronary artery disease, chronic kidney disease, liver disease, high blood pressure (hypertension), osteoarthritis, or Parkinson’s disease were not associated with C8 exposure.

One of the panelists, Dr. Kyle Steenland, found that high blood pressure affected 20% of the people in the study. The participants were all part of a C8 class action lawsuit against DuPont, and they had their blood serum and medical history evaluated.

If you or a loved one was exposed to C8 from DuPont’s manufacturing plant in the Mid-Ohio Valley and suffer from high cholesterol, kidney cancer, testicular cancer, thyroid disease, IBD and/or preeclampsia, please contact Booth Samuels at booths@pittmandutton.com or toll free at 1-866-515-8880.

DePuy ASR California Trial Update

A California Superior Court judge has issued a final judgment of $8,260,790.85 after the recent trial in a DePuy ASR hip implant case, representing a reduction of $77,345.27 in the jury’s award of compensatory damages.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge J. Stephen Czuleger said in issuing the judgment March 22 that the parties agreed that the $338,136.12 awarded for medical expenses should be reduced under Montana law to account for amounts payable by a collateral source.

The judgment left intact the jury’s award of $8 million in non-economic damages to plaintiff Loren Kransky.