SCOTUS Declines Risperdal Appeal, J&J to Pay $124 M

Justin Karter
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On Monday, the US Supreme Court declined to hear Johnson and Johnson’s final appeal, forcing the company to pay $124 million for the deceptive marketing of the antipsychotic Risperdal. In 2011, South Carolina ordered the company to pay $327 million for pursuing “profits-at-all-costs” in its efforts to persuade doctors to prescribe their drug, but the fine was lowered to $136 million last year. The company had hoped to argue that the remaining penalties constituted an “excessive fine” and was supported by PhRMA, the Washington Legal Foundation, the Cato Institute and the Chamber of Commerce.
Janssen-Cilag Sales Jobs_1

In September, Huffington Post and journalist Steve Brill combined to launch a 15 part series- “America’s Most Admired Lawbreaker” – about how Johnson & Johnson illegally violated FDA restrictions by pushing the antipsychotic drug, Risperdal, for use with adolescents and the elderly. The documents “revealed that the company organized special sales units illegally targeting doctors who treated the elderly and children.”

The company also faces about 5,400 lawsuits involving gynecomastia, following allegations that the company failed to warn doctors, patients, and regulators of the risk of abnormal breast development in young males who took Risperdal.

More:

Fierce Pharma: “Time for J&J to pay up in $124M Risperdal case as SCOTUS deflects final appeal”

Medical Express: “High court won’t hear appeal over $124M drug penalty”

The Post and Courier: “Supreme Court decision on drug-marketing suit could bring South Carolina $124M”

Reuters: “U.S. justices reject Johnson & Johnson unit’s anti-psychotic drug appeal”

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Justin Karter
Justin Karter
MIA Research News Editor: Justin Karter is a writer, researcher and community organizer with graduate degrees in both journalism and community psychology. He is a doctoral candidate in Counseling Psychology at UMass Boston, an active member of the Society for Humanistic Psychology, and is currently working on several scholarly projects at the intersection of psychology, social theory, and political philosophy.

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10 COMMENTS

  1. A $124 million fine, just the cost of doing business for the sociopathic remorseless parasitic profiteers at Johnson and Johnson.

    In 2014 Johnson and Johnson made profits of $16 billion on $74 billion in gross sales. So this puny fine is about 0.6% of one year’s profit. Getting away with a handslap will only encourage them to do it again.

    http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/phillypharma/Johnson–Johnsons-2014-revenue-rose-and-profits-soared.html

    What should have happened is that senior executives who organized the targeting of kids and old people should have been tried in criminal court, sentenced, and imprisoned. And of course corporate-doctor and corporate-public advertising should be outlawed.

    Meanwhile, the ignorant government regulators who take in the $124 million fine will probably redirect the funds to yet more harmful biological research, or put it toward the cost of mounting an invasion of Tajikistan. It’s a sad time to live in this once great country (America), if it was ever exceptional to begin with.

    • Gotta agree with you. We need some regulators who have been victims of the mental health system! A fine of this magnitude is like a small tax they are more than willing to pay. How about the fine is proportionate to the estimated additional profits made from dishonest marketing? Hit them up for a billion or two and maybe you’ll get their attention.

      • Or take something that doesn’t regenrate the way money does, like their headquarters and factories. There’s a huge cost to moving. Personnel would be disoriented, work would be disrupted, and it would be far more visible than a wire transfer. There were would throngs outside cheering the day a crane lowers their logo. All the better if we’re allowed to take turns pelting it with rotten vegetables.

    • It is a joke of a fine. And the doctors were nutty about Risperdal, back around the turn of the century. I was put on Risperdal, it made me have a first “psychotic” break, within two weeks. My the psychiatrist thought the “cure” to this drug induced “psychosis,” was to double the amount of Risperdal.

      I left that psychiatrist, went to another who switched me to a different drug, then put me back on Risperdal in three weeks, while swearing it was not Rispedal.

      At least we’ve found the hypocrites Dante claimed belong in the lowest depths, and absolutely the “sociopathic remorseless parasitic profiteers at Johnson and Johnson” belong there, too.

  2. At least the NAZI doctors did their evil breaking the rules that make us human to get medical knowledge, these sociopathic remorseless parasitic profiteers at Johnson and Johnson did their evil just for money.

    $124 million fine. They knew the evil they were doing, they should be hung from the neck until dead like the NAZI doctors.

  3. Now that I am done with my angry comment I must say I feel sad that I live in a world with such scum, why does it have to be this way ?

    Failed to warn doctors, patients, and regulators of the risk of abnormal breast development in young males… Sickening.

    • It does not have to be this way forever. In the US we have to focus on congress. The psych-harmed are still the least respected and most blamed crime victims but their/our stories are what will cary the day eventually. A well known as Robert Whitaker is, we still need some one with the visibility of Oprah Winfrey to take our cause on.

      Meanwhile everyone who can get online can open a Twitter account and Tweet. Unlike Facebook, Twitter allows fake names so you can post anonymously.

  5. And, I believe that it was in fact Janssen Pharmaceutical which invented “fentanyl” in the 1960’s.
    Fentanyl is the synthetic opiate which is responsible for about 1/2 of all overdose deaths, *STILL*.
    That means the DRUG Janssen invented over 50 years ago KILLED 100 – 200 people here in N.H. alone, in 2015…..Please, be my guest. Fact-check me.

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