America's Most Admired Lawbreaker: Chapter 15, The Verdict...And 'Moving On'
'Very Full, Pendulous Women's Breasts' The following are excerpts from Tom Kline’s closing argument for the plaintiff: Ivo Caers confirmed for us Table 21 was never reported to the FDA. … We know now what’s behind the tables: The little girls with the lactating breasts … and the little boys even under ten who have gynecomastia. My word. And when Dr. Kessler told us, ‘Red flag. This isn’t cherry picking.’ When a pharmaceutical company acting reasonably and prudently has this k
America's Most Admired Lawbreaker: Chapter 13, "Hardball"
A 'Hired Bazooka' Question: Mrs. Pledger, I think you told our jurors that during the time that you're taking Mr. Pledger to doctors while he was on Risperdal, none of his doctors ever diagnosed gynecomastia? Benita Pledger: I never heard of gynecomastia. And, no, they did not. Question: At some point … you saw a commercial on TV for a Plaintiff’s law firm about Risperdal and lawsuits running?
… And it had a phone number 1-800, call if you have taken Risperdal? Pledger: It ha
America's Most Admired Lawbreaker: Chapter 8, "Firing Blanks, Hunting for Smoking Guns"
A Weak First Case On December 14, 2006, Stephen Sheller filed his first case against Johnson & Johnson. The client was a New Jersey boy who had taken Risperdal beginning in 2001. When he had met the boy and his mother, Sheller thought the case would be about diabetes and weight gain. But then she and her son became traumatized by his growing breasts, and in August 2004, he had radical surgery to remove them. Still, the suit focused on diabetes, and the complaint Sheller wrote
America's Most Admired Lawbreaker: Chapter 5, "Three Card Monte"
A Convenient Re-Analysis Six days before Austin Pledger swallowed his first Risperdal, Janssen scientists and marketing executives met with an advisory board of doctors in a luxury hotel suite in New York. The group wrestled with problems concerning the prolactin and gynecomastia data that had come in from the clinical study Gorsky and his team had ordered up, hoping to put the issue to rest. This new study was actually a study of studies. It pooled the one study called “INT-
America's Most Admired Lawbreaker: Chapter 2, Blowing Past the Label
'Otherwise The Sky Would Be The Limit' In 1961, newspapers around the world ran stories (accompanied by horrific images) of deformed babies whose mothers had taken a drug to curb nausea during pregnancy called thalidomide. A vigilant FDA inspector had refused to approve thalidomide for sale in the United States because she was worried about its safety. But the thalidomide story, along with persistent new reports about other drug company abuses, were highlighted in hearings co