Bloomberg News reports, “Johnson & Johnson should pay $351 million to Louisiana for defrauding the state’s Medicaid system with false claims about the safety of its antipsychotic drug Risperdal [risperidone], a lawyer for the state told jurors.” The “case centers on drug safety claims that J&J and its Ortho-McNeil-Janssen Pharmaceutical unit made in November 2003 correspondence to 700,000 doctors.” The FDA “responded with a warning letter saying J&J made false and misleading claims that minimized the potentially fatal risks of diabetes and overstated the drug’s superiority to competitors.” The case “is the second of about 10 state lawsuits to go to jury trial over J&J’s marketing of Risperdal.” J&J said “research ‘suggests’ that Risperdal ‘is not associated with an increased risk of diabetes’ compared with an earlier class of antipsychotics.”
From the American Association for Justice news release.
