Families of 1982 Tylenol Cyanide Victims Settle With McNeil on the Eve of Trial

In late September 1982, seven people in the Chicago area died within days of one another. Each had swallowed an Extra-Strength Tylenol capsule that someone had pulled apart and refilled with cyanide. The tampered bottles had been slipped onto store shelves in suburbs north and west of the city. The deaths set off a national scare, and Johnson & Johnson pulled roughly 31 million bottles of Tylenol from shelves across the country. The person who poisoned the capsules was never charged.

The victims were four women, two men, and a 12-year-old girl. Several belonged to the same family and died after taking capsules from a single bottle. Among the survivors were eight children who lost a parent. Their families brought wrongful death claims against McNeil Consumer Products, the Johnson & Johnson unit that manufactured Tylenol.

Philip Corboy, the founder of what is now Corboy & Demetrio, represented the families of three of the victims, working with attorney Bruce Pfaff. The core dispute was whether McNeil should have foreseen that its capsules could be tampered with and whether tamper-resistant packaging would have saved lives. The suits filed for the families sought damages in the range of $10 million to $15 million each.

The case was set for trial in Cook County Circuit Court before Judge Warren Wolfson. In May 1991, almost nine years after the deaths, the parties reached a settlement just as the lawyers were preparing to select a jury. By agreement of everyone involved, the dollar amounts were kept confidential. Part of the deal funded annuities to cover college costs for the victims' eight children.

McNeil and Johnson & Johnson denied any legal responsibility for the poisonings. The company said it could not have anticipated a criminal act of tampering, but wanted to do something for the families. Because the matter settled before trial, no jury verdict was entered and there was no appeal.

The poisonings changed the way over-the-counter medicine is sold. Within months, drug makers shifted to tamper-resistant packaging that sealed each carton with a glued flap, wrapped the bottle in a plastic band, and covered the opening with a foil disc under the cap.