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Dangerous and Defective Products

Dangerous and defective products and product liability is an area that personal injury attorneys have a substantial impact in their efforts to protect the rights of people harmed by these dangerous defective products. Defective products may take the form of child booster seats, bicycle parts, cars that are recalled, defective tires, or pharmaceuticals, and medical devices such as the recently recalled DePuy hip implant.

It is particularly troubling when corporations put profits and their image ahead of the public that they serve. The recent Oregon suit against the makers of Motrin (January 2011) is an excellent example of a corporation going to great lengths to protect their image instead of making a simple and clear statement to the public about the defective Motrin batches.

The batch of defective Motrin did not dissolve correctly or quickly enough which could give the user a less-to-zero-dose of the Motrin that they intended to purchase and take. The Motrin did not have worse defects, it was not an extremely dangerous product, though consumers no doubt had some harm, this was not a dangerous pharmaceutical that would do quick and permanent harm to a broad segment of users like Fen-Phen which, "After reports of valvular heart disease and pulmonary hypertension, primarily in women who had been undergoing treatment with fen-phen, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requested its withdrawal from the market in September 1997. [...] As of 2004, Fen-phen is no longer widely available. In April 2005, American Lawyer magazine ran a cover story on the wave of Fen-phen litigation, reporting that more than 50,000 product liability lawsuits had been filed by alleged fen-phen victims. Estimates of total liability ran as high as $14 billion." Even still, Phen-Fen had caused such greivous injury, and even death, the payments Phen-Fen product liability case were not sufficent for the harm that the product and the company had caused. [3.]

The makers of Motrin, however, perhaps because they were also plagued by numerous recent recalls of their different products, sought to secretly pull the defective Motrin from shelves across the USA and employed secret shoppers to do so. According to The Huffington Post, "The New Brunswick, N.J., company has now issued 22 product recalls, involving well over 300 million bottles of medicines, since September 2009." [4.]

According to CNN/Money, "The public first learned of the phantom recall when details of it emerged in June during a Congressional hearing addressing a series of other Johnson & Johnson recalls. That's when company executives as well as the FDA were questioned about an attempt to surreptitiously take Motrin off the shelves. After months of maintaining that the company did not engage in any deceptive practices in the Motrin recall, J&J CEO William Weldon finally admitted to lawmakers in December that J&J secretly bought up defective drugs without informing regulators and consumers of its actions." [1.]

In Oregon, this covert so called "phantom recall," is at the heart of the State's complaint, which in essence charges that the makers of Motrin, Johnson & Johnson/McNeil violated Oregon state law and acted with deceptive business practices. The Oregon State Attorney General said in a public statement, "Companies that break the rules and put consumers at risk will be held accountable." [1.]

According to a New York Times, Oregon Attorney General Kroger said in a phone statement, "It would be a disaster if these kinds of phantom recalls became an acceptable business practice," Mr. Kroger said. "The real significance is to send a message to pharmaceutical companies and other companies that make medical products that they have to do proper recalls that give consumers real notice." [2.]

RESOURCES

1. CNN Money – courtesy of: Fortune, CNN and Money Johnson & Johnson Phantom Motrin Lawsuit January 13, 2011 http://money.cnn.com/2011/01/13/news/companies/johnson_johnson_phantom_motrin_lawsuit/index.htm

2. NEW YORK TIMES http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/13/business/13drug.html
Oregon Sues J.&J. in Motrin Buyback By NATASHA SINGER and REED ABELSON Published: January 12, 2011

3. Wikipedia: Fen-Phen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fen-phen

4. Huffington Post
Johnson & Johnson Issues Epilepsy Recall
April 14,2011
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/14/johnson-johnson-issues-epilepsy-recall_n_849374.html