Court upholds large verdict against drug company for girl permanently disabled after taking Children's Motrin

The Supreme Judicial Court today upheld a jury decision to award a South Shore teen and her parents $63 million in damages for the permanent injuries she suffered after being given several doses of Children's Motrin when she was 7.

Samantha Reckis's parents sued Johnson & Johnson, saying they never would have continued giving her the pain reliever in 2003 - or let her doctors give her even more - had they known the rash she developed after treatment for what initially seemed like a cold was a potential side effect of the drug that, in her case would turn into a life-threatening series of complications, many of them permanent.

At the time, the Children's Motrin warning label did not mention this.

The state's highest court rejected Johnson & Johnson's argument that a federal drug-labeling law for over-the-counter drugs preempted state lawsuits, saying the federal law has a section that specifically allows lawsuits over possible OTC side effects.

The court also rejected the company's argument that a key witness for the family - a pharmacology and toxicology professor - should not have been allowed to testify because he wasn't a medical doctor treating patients with the girl's symptoms. The court noted he had a doctorate in the field, had spent three decades teaching it and had authored numerous articles in the field and so was qualified as an "expert."

And the court rejected the drug company's claim that the jury verdict was excessive. In essence, the court said, the company's own lawyers blew it: The jury did not specify which part of the award was for future medical expenses, which for future loss of income and which for "pain and suffering" - and the lawyers didn't contest that at the time of the verdict, and now it's too late, the court said.

In any case, the court said it was disinclined to think the awards to Reckis and her parents - which with interest now total more than $100 million - were not just:

It is unnecessary to recount again a full litany of Samantha's injuries, but the most severe of her injuries bear repeating in evaluating the amount of the award. As a result of having TEN, the seven year old Samantha suffered lesions (blisters) all over her body and lost the top layer of her skin (over ninety-five percent of it), substantially the same as for a severe burn victim; she was hospitalized for six months, where she needed to be placed in a medically induced coma for a full month to deal with the pain; while in the hospital, she suffered liver and heart failure, a stroke, seizures, and a cranial hemorrhage, and had only twenty per cent of her lung capacity; upon discharge she was required to eat through a feeding tube for two years and required oxygen every night for the same period of time; at the time of trial, she weighed just eightytwo pounds as a sixteen year old; she is legally blind; her short-term memory is damaged; her lung capacity remains significantly impaired, and she will never be able to carry a child as a result; and she faces hospitalizations and limitations for the remainder of her life.

The company can now appeal the SJC ruling in the federal courts.