A $8 Billion Risperdal Verdict in Philadelphia, Then a Judge Cut the Punitive Award to $6.8 Million
After trial: The compensatory award in this case was $680,000. The trial judge remitted the $8 billion punitive verdict to $6.8 million in January 2020 as disproportionate to it, and both sides appealed.
Won by Kline & Specter, PC.
A Philadelphia jury awarded $8 billion in punitive damages against Johnson & Johnson over Risperdal and male breast growth in a young patient, an award the trial judge later reduced to $6.8 million.
What happened
Risperdal is an antipsychotic that Janssen Pharmaceuticals, a Johnson & Johnson subsidiary, sold to treat schizophrenia and related conditions. In 2003, doctors prescribed it to Nicholas Murray, a nine-year-old from Maryland, to manage symptoms tied to autism, a use federal regulators had not approved at the time. Murray later developed gynecomastia, the growth of female breast tissue in boys and men. The condition does not reverse on its own.
Murray sued, and the case went to trial in Philadelphia with Thomas R. Kline of Kline & Specter leading the plaintiff's team. The central claim was failure to warn. Kline & Specter argued that Janssen knew Risperdal could cause breast development in young males but did not tell doctors or families, and that the company promoted the drug for children while playing down the risk. A 2015 jury had already awarded Murray $680,000 in compensatory damages on those facts.
The 2019 trial dealt with punitive damages, money meant to punish a defendant rather than repay a specific loss. On October 8, 2019, a jury in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas returned $8 billion against Johnson & Johnson and Janssen. Jurors found that the company had run a nationwide effort to market Risperdal improperly and to hide how serious its risks were. It was one of the largest punitive awards a jury had ever returned in a single pharmaceutical injury case.
It did not hold. On January 17, 2020, Judge Kenneth Powell, who had presided over the trial, cut the punitive award from $8 billion to $6.8 million. That reduced figure equals ten times the $680,000 in compensatory damages from 2015. Powell issued the cut in a short order that gave no detailed reasoning. Janssen said the court had appropriately reduced an excessive award and that it would keep appealing the underlying verdict. Kline called the reduction wrong and said it would be appealed, arguing that it wiped out a valid jury award.
The number announced in October 2019 was $8 billion. The amount left standing after the judge's January 2020 ruling was $6.8 million.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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