generic drugs

The Wall Street Journal's Ed Silverman reports on a rare ruling: brand-name drug manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline must face a Paxil lawsuit from a plaintiff who took the generic version of the drug.

The U.S. Supreme Court has held that generic drugmakers can't be held liable for failing to warn consumers of the risk of their products because they have no authority to change the label approved by federal regulators for the brand-name version.

But the Seventh Circuit denied a bid by GSK to dismiss the lawsuit even though the plaintiff took a generic version of Paxil, WSJ reports. GSK's liability stems from designing and labeling the drug, WSJ further reports.

ProPublica and This American Life put together a pretty amazing reporting project about how 150 Americans die every year by taking too much acetaminophen, Tylenol's active ingredient, and that there were decades-long delays in providing updated consumer warnings that using too much of over-the-counter painkillers with acetaminophen could lead to liver toxicity and even death. This spring, I reported for The Legal Intelligencer that a federal multidistrict litigation for plaintiffs who allege that their use of over-the-counter Tylenol caused their livers to fail or be poisoned was approved to be presided in front of U.S. District Judge Lawrence F. Stengel of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania: http://www.law.com/jsp/pa/PubArticlePA.jsp?id=1202594695498&slreturn=201...

Many more cases may be generated in the MDL in light of this reporting project.

If you haven't read and/or listened to ProPublica and This American Life's reportage, here it is:

http://www.propublica.org/article/tylenol-mcneil-fda-kids-dose-of-confusion

http://www.propublica.org/article/tylenol-mcneil-fda-use-only-as-directed

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/505/use-only-as-d...

Read more: http://www.law.com/jsp/pa/PubArticlePA.jsp?id=1202594695498&slreturn=201...

http://www.law.com/jsp/pa/PubArticlePA.jsp?id=1202594695498&slreturn=201...