Novartis Hid Health Risks of Bone Drugs, Lawyer Tells Jury in New Jersey
Novartis AG officials hid the health risks of the drugmaker’s bone-strengthening medicines Aredia and Zometa, which a woman says destroyed her jaw, a lawyer told a New Jersey jury.
Novartis executives knew as early as 2002 that Jane Bessemer and other cancer patients taking Aredia and Zometa to slow bone loss during treatment may suffer irreplaceable jawbone damage, Bob Germany, a lawyer for the plaintiff, said in opening statements in the trial of Bessemer’s lawsuit over the medicines.
Bessemer and other patients wouldn’t have suffered disfiguring injuries if officials of Basel, Switzerland-based Novartis “had told the public what they knew” about the drugs’ risks, Germany told jurors in New Brunswick, New Jersey, today.
Bessemer’s suit is the second product-liability case to go to trial over the bone-strengthening treatments, which had 2009 sales of $1.5 billion, according to Novartis’ annual report. Both drugs are still on the market. Last year, a Montana jury ordered Novartis to pay $3.2 million in damages to a woman who blamed the drug for damaging her jaw.
Novartis officials provided adequate warnings about Aredia’s and Zometa’s risks on their labels and the treatments weren’t the cause of Bessemer’s jaw damage, Joe Hollingsworth, a lawyer for the drugmaker, said in his opening statement.
“These drugs did exactly what they were intended to do,” Hollingsworth told the panel. The pills helped treat “a serious condition caused by Mrs. Bessemer’s cancer.”
700 Lawsuits
Novartis, which has its U.S. headquarters in East Hanover, New Jersey, is facing almost 700 suits over the bone- strengthening medicines. Some of the cases have been consolidated before a federal judge in Tennessee while others, like Bessemer’s, are in state court in New Jersey.
Plaintiffs contend doctors of Aredia and Zometa users told Novartis officials as early as 2002 that some patients’ jaws were deteriorating. The drugmaker failed to notify the U.S. Food and Drug Administration about these incidents as part of an application to sell Zometa in the U.S., according to court filings.
Bessemer, 70, took Aredia and Zometa for about five years starting in 1999 after being diagnosed with breast cancer that had spread to her bones. Novartis’s drugs help block cancer cells from eating away bones.
The drugs damaged Bessemer’s jaw so badly she had to have six operations to remove dead bone and have a metal plate inserted into her jaw, said Germany, a Jackson, Mississippi- based lawyer representing the woman and her husband.
‘Label Was Adequate’
Hollingsworth countered Aredia and Zometa are the only drugs on the market that can help cancer patients strengthen bones to avoid fractures during their treatment and recovery.
He also said regulators at the FDA approved the information on the drugs’ safety labels, which noted that cases of jaw deterioration had been reported.
“We will prove the label was adequate” when it came to warning about Aredia’s and Zometa’s health risks, he said.
The case is Jane Bessemer v. Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp., MID-L-1835-08-MT, Superior Court of New Jersey, Law Division, Middlesex County (New Brunswick).
To contact the reporters on this story: Jef Feeley in New Brunswick, New Jersey, at jfeeley@bloomberg.net; Margaret Cronin Fisk in Southfield, Michigan, at mcfisk@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: David Rovella at drovella@bloomberg.net.
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