Rispedal Tag

Advocates Cry Foul Over Risperdal Use In Foster Homes

Several groups sued the Department of Social Services because foster parents allegedly used the dangerous drug Risperdal as “chemical straight jackets.”

Attorneys for the National Center for Youth Law, Children’s Rights,  and Saint Louis University School of Law Legal Clinics asked a federal judge to grant the suit class action status and force the state to make changes in the way that the drug is used. The Food and Drug Administration has never approved Risperdal for children, primarily because of reported side effects like suicidal thoughts, uncontolled twitching, and Type 2 diabetes.

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.”

More Victims Filing Risperdal Lawsuits

Janssen Pharmaceuticals, a division of Johnson & Johnson, is facing 40 percent more Risperdal serious side effect lawsuits today than it did just a year ago.

The lead attorneys in Philadelphia have added more than 500 new suits to the docket since the beginning of 2017. J&J lawyers are now even more aggressive in the wake of a $70 million verdict in March 2017; before then, the company had settled many of these actions for as little as $2,000 a case. One source says that J&J is refusing to settle and doing “whatever it takes” to win cases, such as bringing a new stable of expert witnesses to court. On top of the Risperdal lawsuits, the company is dealing with multiple verdicts regarding the link between talcum powder and ovarian cancer, in addition to an ongoing parade of defective hip implant cases. There are more claims on the horizon as well, as the first Xarelto  trial is scheduled to begin in April 2017; these victims claim that the blood thinner causes uncrontrolled bleeding.

Gynecomastia Lawsuit Settles On Courthouse Steps

Janssen Pharmaceuticals, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, paid a victim an undisclosed sum of money to avoid trial in a Risperdal lawsuit.

In December 2016, Judge Arnold L. New ruled that a jury could hear only two of the victim’s thirteen claims. Less than a month later, and three days before jury selection was to begin, the parties announced a settlement. According to court documents, doctors prescribed Risperdal to the victim off-label in 2002 while he was still a minor; at that time, the Food and Drug Administration had only approved the drug for use in adults with certain mental health conditions. After taking Risperdal for ten years, the young man developed gynecomastia (male breast enlargement), a condition that nearly always requires aggressive surgery to correct.

Judge Awards $2.5 Million to Gynecomastia victim that took Risperdal

A Philadelphia court jury awarded $2.5 Million to the family of an autistic boy who developed male breasts after taking the drug Risperdal beginning in 2002. This is a big setback for the large drug manufacturer Johnson & Johnson who was reported to failed to warn people that taking Risperdal, an antipsychotic drug, might cause gynecomastia better known as male breast development. You can find out more information about Gynecomastia and the Side Effects of Risperdal. This case is the first lawsuit that proves J&J hid the possible side affects of the drug including gynecomastia. Johnson and Johnson settled many cases years ago involving...

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