Massachusetts Personal Injury News
Case Against Wyeth in U.S. Supreme Court
The case against the drug manufacturer, Wyeth, has reached the U.S. Supreme Court and the outcome of the case could affect thousands of potential lawsuits by consumers against drug companies each year.
Musician Diana Levine never considered that her trip to a health clinic would ultimately result in the loss of her arm and career. Levine went to the health clinic to get relief from her migraine. In April 2000, she was given pain medicine and another drug, made by Wyeth , for nausea. The physician’s assistant who gave her the anti-nausea drug, called Phenergan, mistakenly injected it into an artery, instead of a vein. There was a warning on the drug’s label indicating that injecting it into an artery could cause irreversible gangrene.
Levine’s arm had to be amputated. She used to play the guitar and piano. Levine sued the health clinic and the physician’s assistant for malpractice and reached a settlement outside of court. She also filed a lawsuit against Wyeth and was awarded $6.7 million by a Vermont jury in 2004. The jury found that the drug’s label offered insufficient warning about the danger of that injection method compared with two other safer methods to administer the drug. In 2006, the Vermont Supreme Court upheld the jury’s verdict.
Wyeth was set to argue its case in front of the U.S. Supreme Court that the state ruling should be over-turned. The main issue at hand is whether patients can sue drug manufacturers under state laws if the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the drug and had been fully informed of its risk. Most states allow such lawsuits against drug companies if there was a failure to warn consumers about products’ hazards that are not obvious.
The U.S. Supreme Court will have to consider whether FDA-approved warning labels on drugs offer protection to drug companies. Levine is optimistic that the U.S. Supreme Court will uphold the lower-court rulings.
