Risperdal Plaintiff Demands New Trial

Dean Hibbs asked a Pennsylvania judge to reinstate his Risperdal lawsuit against drug maker Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc. after a rather bizzare episode led to a mistrial declaration.

As one of the plaintiff’s medical experts was testifying in court, a juror had an emergency medical episode and the doctor stopped his testimony to help the stricken juror. Judge Kenneth Powell ruled that the jurors could not consider the expert’s testimony in an unbiased manner and ordered it stricken from the record. Without this testimony, Janssen’s lawyers argued, Mr. Hibbs failed to meet his burden of proof as a matter of law, and so Judge Powell threw out the case. In his response, Mr. Hibbs argued that he had presented sufficient evidence for a reasonable juror to conclude that there was a Risperdal/gynecomastia link, and that in any case, the mistrial was improper because the judge ordered it “without conducting voir dire of the jury to determine whether they were in fact prejudiced.”