American Association for Justice reports today:
The Wall Street Journalreports that Johnson & Johnson (J&J) said in a regulatory filing Wednesday that it has received inquiries from more states about recalls of some of its over-the-counter drugs. The company earlier said that only the US Attorney’s Office in Philadelphia had sent grand-jury subpoenas over the recalls, which have included Motrin, Tylenol and Benadryl. The company indicated it is cooperating with Philadelphia authorities, but it did not disclose which states had become involved. The Journal noted that the company has stopped production at a Pennsylvania plant in Fort Washington, and the FDA says there are issues at another plant in Lancaster.
The AP reports that the company said in its quarterly filing with the SEC that “multiple State Attorneys General Offices” had issued subpoenas in connection with the recalls. In addition, the FDA said in May that it had turned its case “over to its Office of Criminal Investigations.”
One of the plants, in the Philadelphia suburb of Fort Washington, Pa., has been shut down since April due to multiple problems and is expected to remain shut until at least next summer. The other, in Lancaster, Pa., is operated by a joint venture called Johnson & Johnson/Merck Consumer Pharmaceuticals Co. Food and Drug Administration inspectors noted many severe problems after spending a dozen days there, from not following rules for manufacturing quality to poor record-keeping. The manager of the Fort Washington plant has since been fired, 300 of the 400 workers there will lose their jobs shortly and the fiasco led Johnson & Johnson to sharply reduce its 2010 profit forecast.
At Lancaster, the FDA said there was “a pattern of ignoring rules for manufacturing and quality, failure to investigate problems that could affect the composition of products, carelessness in cleaning and maintaining equipment, and shoddy record-keeping.”
The recall may cost J&J up to $600 million this year.
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