GlaxoSmithKline Plc, the U.K.’s largest drugmaker, failed to properly warn consumers that its antidepressant drug Paxil could cause birth defects, a lawyer for the family of an injured teenager told jurors.
Glaxo officials had research from the 1980s showing Paxil caused deaths among the offspring of animal test subjects and didn’t provide clear warnings about those deaths, Kimberly Baden, a lawyer for Anna Blyth and her family, told a Philadelphia jury. Baden said the drug caused a narrowing of the aorta leading from the heart of Anna, now 14 years old.
“We believe the evidence will show Paxil caused Anna’s birth defects,” Baden said in opening statements in the trial. “We believe the warnings and instructions put out in 1995 weren’t appropriate and reasonable.”
The Blyth family’s case is the first over Paxil’s birth- defect risks to go to trial since the company agreed in July to pay more than $1 billion to settle 800 cases alleging the company failed to adequately warn consumers and their doctors about the drug’s hazards. The Blyth case wasn’t part of the settlement.
In the first Philadelphia trial, a jury ordered Glaxo in October 2009 to pay $2.5 million in damages to the family of a 3-year-old boy born with heart defects his mother blamed on the drug.
Tuesday, November 09, 2010
Glaxo Failed to Warn About Paxil Risks, Lawyer Says at Philadelphia Trial - Bloomberg
via bloomberg.com
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