Roche Hit With $25M Accutane Verdict

By Ben James

Law360, New York (February 17, 2010) -- A New Jersey state court jury has smacked drugmaker Hoffmann-La Roche Inc. with a $25.2 million dollar verdict in a case brought by a man who claimed the acne drug Accutane was responsible for the inflammatory bowel disease that led to the loss of his colon.

The verdict came down Tuesday in the New Jersey Superior Court and followed a five-week trial and about three and a half days of jury deliberation, according to Michael Hook, who represents plaintiff and former Accutane user Andrew McCarrell.

Roche vowed to appeal the verdict.

Hook told Law360 that he expected the verdict would withstand appellate scrutiny and noted that Roche had challenged a previous jury verdict in the case. In 2007 a jury awarded McCarrell $2.6 million, but Roche successfully challenged that verdict, getting an appeals court to vacate the judgment in March 2009.

Roche is facing around 1,000 suits over Accutane, almost all of which are lodged in New Jersey state court , Hook said.

Roche said it was sympathetic to McCarrell's condition but was disappointed with the jury's decision.

"Both the finding and the amount of damages were unsupported by the evidence," according to Roche, adding that evidence demonstrated that McCarrell's IBD was not caused by Accutane.

Roche stopped selling Accutane in 2009 because of "business reasons," not safety concerns, the company said.

"Sooner or later, Roche needs to acknowledge what five separate juries have concluded," Hook said. "That is, that Roche failed to adequately warn of the risk of inflammatory bowel disease with the use of its drug, Accutane."

The nine-member jury found that Roche failed to provide an adequate warning to McCarrell's prescribing physician about the risks of inflammatory bowel disease from Accutane and that that failure to warn was a "proximate cause" of McCarrell's IBD, according to McCarrell's lawyers.

The $25.16 million was a compensatory damage award, and punitive damages were not sought, counsel for McCarrell said.

In March the New Jersey Superior Court Appellate Division held that the trial court’s restrictions on Roche to present information to the jury on the number of Accutane users as part of its defense constituted “reversible and harmful error” and required the first McCarrell judgment be scrapped and the matter remanded for a new trial.

Andrew McCarrell is represented in this matter by Levin Papantonio Thomas Mitchell Echsner & Proctor P.A., Seeger Weiss LLP, Beggs & Lane and Hook & Bolton PA.

Defendants Hoffmann-La Roche Inc. and Roche Laboratories Inc. are represented by Covington & Burling LLP and Gibbons PC.

The case is McCarrell v. Roche, case number ATL-L-1951-03-MT, in the New Jersey Superior Court.