Hard-up companies may not be able to pay stiff judgment for deceptive advertising of penis-injection treatments

A Suffolk Superior Court judge has ordered two companies that advertised erectile-dysfunction treatments that typically involved injecting drugs into patients' penises at a Framingham clinic to pay $17 million in penalties - with about a third of that to go to the men who put up with the procedure.

In a statement, however, the state Attorney General's office reports:

The companies have represented that they have ceased operations, and recovery of the amounts they are ordered to pay is uncertain.

The state is continuing to sue Dr. Kevin Hornsby and his wife, Heidi, who ran the clinic. The pair allegedly oversaw an unlicensed operation in which people with no medical training first sold men on the process - making sure to mention the injection part at the very end of the sales pitch - then injected them with drugs that predate today's brand-name ED drugs, which are typically taken orally.

In a complaint filed last year, the state charged that two common side effects of getting drugs injected in the penis were pain and the four-hour erections that every watcher of Viagra and Cialis ads knows requires immediate medical attention.