$25 Million Verdict Awarded to Former Accutane User
Jury Finds Failure to Adequately Warn User of Risks was a Proximate Cause of Inflammatory Bowel Disease
February 16, 2010In yet another major verdict against the pharmaceutical company Hoffmann-La Roche, a New Jersey jury unanimously ordered the company to pay $25.16 million in damages to a former user of its Accutane drug, Andrew McCarrell, who alleged the acne medicine caused his inflammatory bowel disease.
McCarrell, 38, a computer technician from Birmingham, Alabama, got
sick after taking the drug for acne in 1995. He needed five surgeries, including
one to remove his colon. The jury found that Roche failed to provide an adequate
warning and that the company's failure to warn was the proximate cause of McCarrell's
inflammatory bowel disease. The nine jurors ruled unanimously that McCarrell deserved
$25 million in compensatory damages and $159,000 for past medical expenses. McCarrell
claimed Roche violated New Jersey's consumer fraud law.
More than 13 million people took Accutane after it was introduced in 1982. The drug also has been associated with birth defects and depression. Roche stopped selling the drug in June 2009, citing generic competition and the high cost of defending personal injury lawsuits. Roche faces hundreds of other lawsuits over Accutane.
The verdict today was the largest of six for Accutane users who won awards totaling $56 million. Roche lost every case, although a Florida appeals court overturned one of those judgments for $7.2 million. McCarrell's current case was a retrial of his previous lawsuit against Roche in 2007, in which McCarrell was awarded only $2.62 million in damages. Accordingly, this new jury award represents an increase in the damages awarded to McCarrell in the amount of $22.54 million.
The case is McCarrell v. Hoffmann LaRoche Inc., L-1951-03, New Jersey Superior Court, Atlantic County (Atlantic City).