Thursday, July 21, 2011

J and J must pay S.C. $327 million

A South Carolina judge has rules that Johnson & Johnson must pay $327 million for deceptive marketing of its Risperdal antipsychotic medication.

Judge Roger Couch chastised the company's management for allowing "the profit-at-all-costs mentality to cloud" their approach to marketing the drug. The letter to doctors, which eventually drew a warning from FDA for false and misleading claims, was a "clever effort" to "manipulate the message" about Risperdal, Couch ruled (as quoted by Bloomberg).