Important Litigation FIled Against Makers or Levaquin



Posted: Monday, September 07, 2009

by
LegalView

Patients affected by serious Levaquin side effects might find future litigation more feasible after four recently announced lawsuits are settled. The lawsuits, filed by the firm of Carey and Danis, could set the standard for how legal action and proceedings are handled against the makers, marketers, and resellers of Levaquin. The four suits name Johnson and Johnson, Ortho-McNeil Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Walgreen Co. as defendants. The civil suits represent twenty plaintiffs, and allege that both the manufacturer and distributor of Levaquin has prior knowledge of the serious side effects of the medication, including extreme tendinitis and possible tendon rupture. The suits go on to to say that the companies misled federal investigators and the general public as to the safety of the drug by fabricating clinical information.

Levaquin belongs to a family of drugs known as quinolones. Specifically, it is classified as a fluoroquinolone, a group of medications used as antibiotics for serious infections where other antibiotics may have proved ineffective. Though there are appropriate applications for these antibiotics, they present potentially damaging side effects. Both Levaquin and it's cousin, Cipro, have been shown to present a significant risk of extreme tendinitis and tendon rupture. Many patients taking Levaquin have reported their Achilles tendon rupturing, causing permanent disability.

The lawsuit asserts that Johnson and Johnson and Ortho-McNeil had knowledge of these side effects years before cases began surfacing, yet they continued to market the drug as a safe and viable alternative. Additionally, the lawsuits allege that the two companies manipulated study data in order to circumvent potentially damning evidence against the drug and that the companies minimized the risks to patients when marketing the drug to physicians. The suit charges Johnson and Johnson and Ortho-McNeil with negligence, breach of warranties, and violations of the Illinois Consumer Fraud Act, just to name a few.

Levaquin has been in the spotlight for nearly 10 years; in 2001, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) instituted initial warning on possible tendon ruptures in patients taking Levaquin. Again in 2004 the FDA issued warnings on Levaquin, expanding the risk of potential tendon rupture from an isolated incident with the Achilles tendon to other tendons in the body, as well as adding the risk of rupture for a period of time after taking the medication. Through 2007 and 2008, the FDA instituted a requirement for the packing of Levaquin, requiring an extended side effect list to be present with the medication as well as giving the drug the FDA's strongest warning label, the Black Box label. The FDA has been quoted recently saying that Levaquin, , "poses a serious and significant public health concern."

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