Litigation

Fentanyl Brings a Patch of Lawsuits

By Angel L. Reyes, III

A Sanford, Florida jury awarded $13.3 million to the family of 34-year-old Susan Susan Hodgemire, who died from the Duragesic Pain Patch just days after undergoing back surgery.  Hours after this verdict was returned, my firm, Heygood, Orr, Reyes, Pearson & Bartolomei, began its case against the manufacturers of Duragesic on behalf of the family of Janice Dicosolo of Chicago, who also died while wearing the Duragesic patch.

The manufacturer of the Duragesic Transdermal Pain Patch and other brands are being sued due to a leak in the patch that allows too much of the opioid painkiller to enter the system directly through the skin, causing fatal overdose.  Fentanyl is 100 times stronger than morphine, and this lethal drug has now killed several victims.

My firm HORP&B was the first to win a federal case against the makers of any fentanyl pain patch.  The jury awarded the family of 28-year-old Adam Hendelson $5.5 million last year in a West Palm Beach federal court.   Eric Pearson, Partner of HORP&B was interviewed for the following article that ran in the Orlando Sentinel today.

Jury awards $13.3M to family in pain-patch death
Orlando Sentinel
Rene Stutzman | Sentinel Staff Writer
October 30, 2008

A Sanford jury has awarded $13.3 million to the family of a woman who died when her pain patch failed, flooding her system with too much medicine.

Dozens of other suits have been filed nationally against drug giant Johnson & Johnson, alleging that its patches leaked and killed patients. But this week's judgment in Seminole Circuit Court was the biggest to date.

Susan Diane Hodgemire, 34, who lived near Apopka with her husband and five children, died June 8, 2002, a few days after she underwent back surgery.

She had placed two patches containing fentanyl, a powerful pain reliever, on her right arm as directed, attorney Joseph Taraska said. But the gel pack inside one or both patches began to leak, Taraska said, allowing the medicine to come into direct contact with her skin, where it was absorbed too quickly.

The patches, he said, are designed to release medicine over a 72-hour period.

In the middle of the night, Hodgemire began to vomit violently, lapsed into a coma, stopped breathing and died.

Jurors deliberated six hours before returning their verdict about 10:30 p.m. Tuesday. They blamed the woman's death on two Johnson & Johnson companies: patch manufacturer ALZA Corp. of Vacaville, Calif., and distributor Janssen LP of Titusville, N.J. They were ordered to pay 80 percent of the judgment.

The remainder is to be paid by Kurt Wood, a former physician assistant at Jewett Orthopaedic Clinic. The jury found him guilty of malpractice. When Hodgemire phoned for help in the middle of the night, Wood told her to take anti-nausea medicine and go back to bed, Taraska said.

Wood's lawyer, Aram Megerian, said Hodgemire failed to tell the physician assistant how ill she was when she called.

Jewett was originally named in the suit, but Taraska said the case had been "resolved."

The patient's husband, Scott Hodgemire, said Wednesday that he was wowed by the judgment but is prepared to fight an appeal.

"The only real point here is there's a bunch of children who lost their mother. One doesn't even know his mother," Hodgemire said. That's a reference to the couple's youngest son, who was 2 at the time of her death. "No amount of money, no amount of litigation is ever going to bring her back."

Taraska said ALZA knew it was producing defective patches but kept doing so.

The brand of patch Hodgemire was wearing -- Duragesic -- has been recalled four times, said Greg Panico, a Janssen spokesman. The most recent recall, in February, was because of cuts found in the patch's drug reservoir, he said.

"We sympathize with the Hodgemire family over their loss," he said, "however, we disagree with the jury's verdict and are considering our options for an appeal."

Hours after the Sanford jury returned its verdict, attorneys for a Chicago-area woman who died in 2004 began presenting their case against ALZA and Janssen to an Illinois jury.

Janice Dicosolo, a mother of three, died of a fentanyl overdose after wearing a Duragesic patch, said Eric Pearson, a Dallas lawyer whose firm represents her family.

It's the same firm that won a $5.5 million judgment against ALZA and Janssen in a West Palm Beach federal court last year in the death of Adam Hendelson, 28. He died in 2003 from a fentanyl overdose.

In 2006, a Houston jury awarded the family of another overdose victim more than $700,000.

Johnson & Johnson is fighting dozens of other pain-patch cases in courts across the country.

©2008 Angel Reyes
www.ReyesLaw.com

Full post as published by Angel Reyes Blog on October 30, 2008 (boomark / email).