Glaxo Negligent, Not Outrageous

An article in yesterday's Philadelphia Inquirer is the first mainstream media piece to try and grapple with the implications of last week's court award of $2.5 million to the family of Lyam Kilker. His mother took Paxil while she was pregnant with him and he was born with several heart defects. The jury verdict was in some ways mixed.

"Jurors linked Lyam's problems to Paxil and said Glaxo had been negligent in not properly warning David's doctor of the drug's risk, but they did not find the London company's behavior outrageous, which would have been necessary to award punitive damages....

"Kline said last week's jury verdict was a strong win because birth defects were fairly common whether or not a pregnant woman takes a drug. That can make it hard to convince a jury that a product caused a birth defect, he said.

"'The real hurdle is proving causation,' said Kline, who has represented plaintiffs at trial in many cases involving birth defects."

If you can prove it to one jury, I'd imagine you can prove it to others. There are about 600 pending similar Paxil birth defects cases awaiting trial. GlaxoSmithKline will fight them all.

It's striking to consider that only one other Paxil-related case in the US has gone to a jury and had a plaintiff's verdict--a 2001 Wyoming case where a jury ordered GSK to pay $6.4 million relating to a murder-suicide where a man had taken Paxil. In 2004, GSK also paid $2.5 million and made a bunch of concessions with the State of New York concerning GSK's covering up all manner of problems with Paxil (that case is the subject of Alison Bass' book "Side Effects").

There's also a large class action lawsuit concerning Paxil in the UK.