A federal jury awarded an Edina man more than $1.7 million in damages Wednesday after finding that drug giant Johnson & Johnson failed to adequately warn patients that its popular antibiotic Levaquin may cause tendon damage.
The Minneapolis jury awarded $1.1 million in punitive damages and $630,000 in compensatory damages to 82-year-old John Schedin, who ruptured or partially ruptured both Achilles tendons after taking Levaquin and a steroid five years ago for bronchitis. At the time, neither Schedin nor his physician was aware of the risks associated with the drug combination.
The case in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis was the first to go to trial of thousands nationwide that Levaquin patients have filed with claims of tendon injuries. The blockbuster drug is commonly prescribed for various infections -- more than 430 million prescriptions have been written worldwide.
The verdict from a jury of eight men and four women came after nearly three weeks of often riveting, but sometimes highly technical testimony that explored the intricacies of epidemiology, clinical studies and complicated drug regulations.
Schedin, a retired salesman who said he was an active golfer and mall-walker until his injury, filed the suit against New Jersey-based Johnson & Johnson and its Ortho-McNeil-Janssen Pharmaceuticals unit in 2008, claiming they failed to warn doctors and patients of Levaquin's association with tendon damage.
J&J's lawyers repeatedly denied the claim, saying a warning has been on the drug's label since 1997 when Levaquin was launched in the United States.
Juror Zach Rawson of Rochester said Wednesday: "We talked a lot about the responsibility the company had to the general public as far as safety goes. We felt that they didn't warn adequately, that they didn't use enough means of warning the public, especially the doctors."
In 2008, the Food and Drug Administration required J&J and makers of similar drugs to include a serious "black box" warning on packaging regarding possible tendon damage.
