Plaintiff wins verdict over contaminated Heparin; Illinois jury awards $625,000

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By Peter Harrison
Dolan Media Newswires

BOSTON, MA — An Illinois jury has awarded $625,000 to the estate of a man who died after being given a contaminated form of the blood thinner Heparin during dialysis.

The case brought by the estate of Stephen Johansen was the first to go to trial out of approximately 800 lawsuits filed against Baxter International Inc. and its supplier Scientific Protein Laboratories, according to the winning lawyer, Don Nolan of Nolan Law Group in Chicago.

Another suit against Baxter was previously settled for a confidential amount, he said.

According to Nolan, Baxter and SPL sold contaminated Heparin that came from China to the American public until the company recalled the drug in 2008. At the time, the contaminated Heparin accounted for half of the U.S. market for the drug, he said.

“With the 800 pending cases, I think the verdict will be reviewed by the defense and the plaintiffs, and hopefully act as a guide for resolving future claims,” said Nolan, who is handling approximately 130 other Heparin cases.

Johansen was hospitalized in the fall of 2007 for acute renal failure as a result of vasculitis, an inflammatory disease, and was then diagnosed with pneumonia and sepsis. The plaintiffs alleged he was given contaminated Heparin doses on Dec. 7, Dec. 10 and Dec. 12. He died on Dec. 13, Nolan said. The verdict was reached on June 9.

According to Nolan, the defense alleged that Johansen’s death was due to sepsis.

“Baxter takes its responsibility for legitimate cases of harm very seriously,” the company said in a statement. “Both the CDC and FDA identified a well-defined and discrete set of symptoms potentially associated with heparin contamination. Baxter will vigorously defend claims that are not consistent with the definition established by public health authorities.”

Nolan said a turning point in the trial came when the court “directed a verdict in favor of the plaintiffs that the contaminated Heparin was defective and unreasonably dangerous as a matter of law, so that the jury was then asked to (consider) issues of proximate cause and damages only.”

“The jury heard a number of witnesses testify about what the plaintiffs claimed was not only a contaminated product but also a failed quality system which failed to detect the contaminant,” Nolan added.