VIOXX SETTLEMENT
http://www.browngreer.com/vioxxsettlement/images/pdfs/mastersa.pdf DURAGESIC PATCH VERDICT BY OUR FRIEND AND BROTHER IKE GULAS
Pain Patch Makers Hit With $5.5M Verdict
Billy Shields
Daily Business Review
07-10-2007
A federal jury in West Palm Beach, Fla., has awarded $5.5 million to the estate of a young West Palm Beach man who died from an overdose due to the malfunction of a popular prescription pain patch manufactured by two Johnson & Johnson subsidiaries.
In 1996, then 21-year-old Adam Hendelson shattered his hip in a car accident. Surgeons grafted a metal plate onto his hip with bolts and pins. His spine, back and hip were all degenerating, causing constant pain. In June 2003, he started using a prescription patch called Duragesic, which administers a powerful painkiller through the skin.
While typing his resume in December 2003, Hendelson passed out while wearing a 75-microgram patch and never woke up again. He died Dec. 16 at age 28. Doctors discovered he died from overdose of fentanyl, a painkiller in the transdermal patch.
Last month, after a two-week trial before Southern District of Florida Judge Daniel T.K. Hurley, the jury deliberated for eight hours before it found the two subsidiaries of New Jersey-based Johnson & Johnson -- Alza Corp. and Janssen Pharmaceutica -- negligent in producing the defective patch that killed Hendelson. The jury also found the companies failed to adequately warn the public about the dangers the patch poses.
Most of the verdict, $5 million, was in noneconomic damages awarded for mental anguish Adam's father, Lee Hendelson, suffered as the result of his son's death. The rest was for economic losses.
The plaintiffs attorney, Jason Stuckey of Gulas & Stuckey in Birmingham, Ala., said the judgment doesn't come close to the worth of a human life. "You tell me, what's a man's only child and his best friend worth?" Stuckey said. Lee "will go through mental anguish and emotional suffering for the rest of his life. Obviously nobody can put a price tag on life, but in lawsuits that's all we can do."
In an interview, Lee Hendelson said, "Just hearing the verdict, that they were guilty of the manufacturing defect, was enough for me. It wouldn't matter if [the verdict] was a low number or a high number. To have my son back right now with me, to have him living and breathing, I would throw it all away just to have him here with us."