Johnson & Johnson’s flood of product recalls last year stemmed from poor management, staffing cuts and breakdowns in integrating the consumer unit it bought from Pfizer Inc. (PFE), J&J said in court papers.
Top executives at the world’s second-largest health-care products company, though, aren’t to blame, J&J said in the filing.
The report by a special committee of J&J board members, filed in response to investor lawsuits, said the company’s McNeil unit suffered from “an adversarial relationship” between some quality-control and production staff as well as "an emphasis on production volume” over compliance. The panel urged J&J’s board to create a new regulatory and compliance panel.
Recalls have dogged J&J the past two years, led by the withdrawal of more than 40 brands of children’s Tylenol, Motrin, and other medicines with foul odors or faulty ingredients. The New Brunswick, New Jersey-based company shut one factory for an overhaul last year and signed a consent decree in March expanding U.S. oversight at three plants.
J&J’s consumer division “should have paid more attention to” quality issues “and exercised more management oversight of McNeil,” the committee said in a 122-page report filed in federal court in Trenton, New Jersey. “With reduced central oversight and tasked with implementing the Pfizer Healthcare acquisition, some McNeil employees may have lost focus and commitment to maintain quality standards.”
Monday, July 25, 2011
Johnson & Johnson Blames Staff Cuts, Pfizer Deal for Tylenol Recall Flood - Bloomberg
via bloomberg.com
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