For antidepressant drug Paxil, there seems to be little happy news these days. The drug, manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline, has faced a plethora of pharmaceutical negligence legal battles since it became available to the public in 1992. Nearly 150 suicide cases involving individuals who took Paxil have been settled for an average of $2 million, while another 300 cases involving attempted suicides have been settled for an average of $300,000. Adding to these legal woes are the claims that the drug’s manufacturer failed to warn users of its addictive characteristics for which there have been roughly 3,200 cases settled at around $50,000 apiece. Including legal disputes over design claims, fraud, and antitrust, GlaxoSmithKline has paid out nearly $1 billion in total to settled Paxil-related lawsuits.
The latest round of high-priced Paxil suits involves the company’s failure to warn pregnant Paxil users of potential birth defects. The first birth defect trial resulted in a verdict that awarded the family of Lyam Kilker, an infant born with cardiac birth defects, $2.5 million in compensatory damages. Settled last October, this is just one case filed against the company in a number that has reached 600 and is still growing.
With more cases headed to the courtroom, questions of what GlaxoSmithKline did to prevent possible birth defects amongst its pregnant users are swirling throughout the media. Glaxo did add a warning to the precautions section on the Paxil label advising users that two studies showed an increased risk of birth defects for infants of pregnant women using the drug. However, the majority of the cases currently reaching court took place before the warning was put into place. Despite the results of the studies held by Glaxo, which are now published in its own literature, the company contends that the links between Paxil and birth defects are inconclusive.
The next Paxil case, scheduled for June, involves one Delaney Novak who was born with heart defects seemingly resulting from her mother having been prescribed the drug to treat migraine headaches.
