Posted by Courtroom View Network on Fri, May 07, 2010 @ 04:55 PM
The jury in Chanin v. Desert Shadow Endoscopy today awarded $500M in punitive damages against Baxter and Teva -- $144M against Baxter and $356M against Teva -- the pharmaceutical companies that manufactured (Teva) and distributed (Baxter) vials of the anesthetic Propofol.
Unsafe injection practices -- dosing multiple patients from a single vial -- resulted in the spread of Hepatitis C at Desert Shadow Endoscopy Center.
The jury had already awarded Henry and Lorraine Chanin over $5M in compensatory damages based on Teva and Baxter's failure to adequately warn of the risks associated with multidosing, and also Teva and Baxter's providing the anesthetic in vials inappropriately large for use in an endoscopy center, which, the jury found, was a breach of the warranty of fitness for a particular purpose.
Plaintiff attorney Robert Eglet claimed that there had been prior outbreaks of Hepatitis at other endoscopy clinics, also resulting from multidosing, and that the pharmaceutical companies knew that the smaller vials were safer. According to the plaintiff, the larger vials were nonetheless supplied because the pharmaceutical companies put profits above safety.
CVN webcast the Chanin Hepatitis Trial live.
District Court Judge Jessie Walsh prepares to receive the jury's verdict in Chanin v. Teva and Baxter Pharmaceuticals in Las Vegas.
Posted by Shelly Albaum on Wed, May 05, 2010 @ 04:20 PM
In his closing argument in Chanin v. Desert Shadow Endoscopy, plaintiff attorney Robert Eglet, arguing the product liability defective design case, reminded the jurors that Craig Lea, the head of development for all of Teva in the United States, had testified that 10ml vials of Propofol were safer for use in endoscopy centers because they reduced the risk of multi-dosing, and that using 50ml vials was more risky.
According to Mr. Eglet, neither Craig Lea nor anyone else provided any evidence of the safety benefits of 50ml vials in endoscopy centers, because there are none. Eglet replayed for the jury videotaped trial testimony of Mr. Lea's inability to answer the yes-or-no question, "In endoscopy centers, the risk of health care providers dosing multiple patients from a single 50ml vial outweights any benefits of the design in an endoscopy center because the 10ml and 20ml vials are safer?"
Eglet reminded the jury that they were legally required to accept the defendants' May 2000 admission, in an FDA filing, that the smaller vial size was safer.
"In May of 2000," said Mr. Eglet, "more than six years before Mr. Chanin got infected, they wrote that a smaller size vial is safer in that it may reduce the temptation for dosing multiple patients from a single container thereby reducing opportunities for microbial contamination."
Plaintiff attorney Will Kemp, arguing the failure to warn case, reviewed five different reasons why Teva and Baxter allegedly provided inadequate warnings. Mr. Kemp reviewed videotaped testimony of executives from both Teva and Baxter stating that the CDC suggested warning label was better or more precise than the actual warning on the propofol vials in question.
As to damages, Mr. Kemp argued that Mr. Chanin had to undergo chemotherapy, and there was a 5% chance that the hepatitis would return. Moreover, as a result of the heptatitis Ms. Chanin basically had to live without intimacy, like a nun.
Defense attorney Mark Tully argued, "Nothing was wrong with the propofol in the bottle that was made by Teva and distributed by Baxter." According to Tully, one of the most important questions in the case was, How much Propofol is a enough? Mr. Tully argued that there is no such thing as a typical procedure, and only the medical professionals can decide whether 10ml is enough in any particular procedure that might be done in an endoscopy center.
Moreover, said Mr. Tully, the label warning advocated by the plaintiffs "was not a better warning at all. In some ways, it's a worse warning."
The jury posed two questions on May 3: first, what was the relationship between Instruction 13 (design is defective if unreasonably dangerous) and Instruction 16 (reasonableness of manufacturers' conduct not to be considered in assessing reasonableness of danger); and second, whether the package inserts were the same for each vial size.
On May 5, the jury found that Teva and Baxter were both liable on theories of failure to warn, and breach of implied warranty of fitness for a particular purpose, but not liable on a strict liability theory for a defective product design.
The jury also found that both defendants were liable for punitive damages.
The jury awarded $3.25M compensatory damages to Henry Chanin, and an additional $1.85M to Lorraine Chanin for loss of consortium.
The punitive damages phase begins tomorrow at 1pm.
CVN is webcasting the Chanin-Teva-Baxter hepatitis trial live.
Posted by Shelly Albaum on Mon, Apr 19, 2010 @ 06:18 PM
Defense fired back in their opening statement in Chanin v. Desert Shadow Endoscopy Center. The plaintiffs alleged that drug companies Baxter and Teva supplied propofol containers that were defective because they were too large, thus encouraging the kind of multi-dose "double-dipping" that could foreseeably result in the spread of blood-born pathogens, such as the Hepatitis C infection that plaintiff Henry Chanin contracted at Desert Shadow Endoscopy.
According to Goodwin Proctor's Mark Tully, however, the Propofol worked as an anesthetic, exactly as it was supposed to work. The Propofol was not contaminated with Hepatitis. The Propofol did not cause any adverse side effects. Moreover, the small 10ml dose was manufactured through 2007, which was after the plaintiff's exposure, and it was only discontinued as a result of low demand from doctors.
According to the defense, there is nothing inherently defective in giving a doctor a choice as to which size to buy.
CVN is webcasting the entire Chanin Endoscopy trial live, gavel-to-gavel.
Posted by Shelly Albaum on Mon, Apr 19, 2010 @ 12:37 PM
Opening statements have begun in CVN's live webcast of Chanin v. Desert Shadow Endoscopy.
Plaintiff attorney Robert Eglet alleged that Pharmaceutical companies Teva and Baxter delivered defective Propofol packaging that unsafely encouraged health care providers to "double-dip," which risks the spread of blood-born diseases, such as Hepatitis and HIV.
Eglet said the "Big Secret," which company emails and testimony would show, was that the pharmaceutical companies knew as early as 1995 that the larger 20ml and 50ml containers encouraged double-dipping, but continued to provide them.
Then in 2001, Eglet said, dosing multiple patients from single vials resulted in a Hepatitis outbreak at an endoscopy center in New York City, which was reported in the New York Times, but the pharmaceutical companies continued to provide Propofol in 50ml vials, with inadequate instruction.
Eglet said that the smaller, safer bottles were less profitable, because they were more expensive to produce, than the larger bottles, so they stopped making the smaller, safer vials.
CVN is webcasting the Chanin v. Endoscopy Center live.
UPDATE: Plaintiff Attorney Will Kemp, in his opening statement, considered other hepatitis outbreaks at other endoscopy centers, and whether Teva should have provided stronger warnings, given that it knew of problems at endoscopy centers at least six years before Mr. Chanin was treated. According to Mr. Kemp, the evidence would show that Teva inaccurately referred to all sizes of Propofol as "single dose," but, he said, calling it such does not make it so. "I could call Mr. Eglet 'Brad Pitt,'" said Mr. Kemp. "He is not Brad Pitt."
Posted by Shelly Albaum on Thu, Apr 08, 2010 @ 02:28 PM
Unsafe injection practices may have caused hundreds of Hepatitis infections in Nevada. The first lawsuit,
Chanin v. Desert Shadow Endoscopy, goes to trial next week, and the plaintiff is blaming the pharmaceutical companies that manufactured (Teva) and supplied (Baxter) the anesthetic Propofol, the improper administration of which may have spread hepatitis C. (Propofol was also the same sedative that was given to singer Michael Jackson.)
According to the plaintiff, the drug was provided in "jumbo-sized" vials that were defective because they encouraged multi-dosing, rather than using a single vial for each patient. According to Baxter, the drugs were clearly labeled for single-use.