J&J, Bayer Ordered to Pay $28 Million in First Xarelto Loss

  • Jury concluded companies were responsible for woman’s injuries
  • Drugmakers had won three previous trials over blood thinner

The Bayer AG logo sits on glass panels at the drugmaker's offices in Berlin, Germany, on Friday, Dec. 1, 2017. 

Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg
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Johnson & Johnson and Bayer AG are responsible for a woman’s injuries tied to the blood-thinning drug Xarelto and must pay almost $28 million in damages, jurors concluded in the companies’ first loss at a trial over the medicine.

Lynn Hartman said she took Xarelto, sold by J&J’s Janssen Pharmaceuticals unit, for more than a year before being hospitalized in 2014 with gastrointestinal bleeding she blamed on the drug. A Philadelphia jury on Tuesday ordered J&J and Bayer, which jointly developed the product, to pay $1.8 million in actual damages and $26 million in punitive damages, one of Hartman’s lawyers said after the verdict.