Federal Jury Awards $15 Million to Boy Born With Spina Bifida in Abbott Depakote Warning Case
After trial: Punitive damages were denied, so the $15 million compensatory award is the full verdict. AbbVie did not say whether it would appeal.
Won by Williams Hart & Boundas.
A federal jury in East St. Louis found in June 2017 that Abbott Laboratories failed to warn a prescribing doctor about the risk of severe birth defects from Depakote. It awarded $15 million in compensatory damages to a 10-year-old boy born with spina bifida after his mother took the drug during pregnancy. The jury declined to award punitive damages.
What happened
In June 2017, a federal jury in East St. Louis, Illinois, returned a $15 million verdict against Abbott Laboratories and its spin-off AbbVie in a Depakote birth-defect case. The plaintiff was a 10-year-old boy born with spina bifida, a defect in which the spinal column does not close around the spinal cord. The case was tried in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois before Judge Nancy Rosenstengel.
The boy's mother took Depakote, an anti-seizure drug also prescribed for mood disorders, to treat bipolar disorder while she was pregnant. By the time of the trial her son had undergone 12 surgeries and used a wheelchair. The family's claim was that the risk of severe birth defects was not adequately communicated to the doctor who prescribed the drug, and so never reached her in a form she could act on.
John Boundas of Williams Kherkher Hart Boundas tried the case for the family. He told jurors that Abbott officials knew Depakote was one of the most toxic drugs to a human baby and downplayed the birth-defect risks. The plaintiff's evidence included expert testimony from a former chief of the birth-defects division at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who said the drug raises the risk of spina bifida in a developing fetus.
Abbott's lawyers argued that the mother's physicians had made her aware of the danger to a fetus and that the label gave doctors what they needed to make an informed decision. The company also disputed that Depakote caused the boy's condition.
The jury sided with the family. It found that Abbott failed to warn the prescribing doctor of the risk of severe birth defects and awarded $15 million in compensatory damages, to cover the boy's medical care and the effects of his disability. Jurors declined to award punitive damages, finding the family had not shown malice, oppression or fraud by clear and convincing evidence.
AbbVie said after the verdict that juries had found the Depakote label lets doctors make properly informed decisions, and it would not say whether it would appeal. About 695 Depakote injury claims were pending against the company in federal and state courts at the time. This was the second Depakote birth-defect trial the company had lost.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.CourtListener, Bartolini v. Abbott Laboratories, Inc., No. 3:15-cv-00702 (S.D. Ill.), docket
- 2.Legal Reader, 'Depakote Birth Defect Trial Ends in $15M Award', June 2017·Archived copy
- 3.HarrisMartin, '$15 Million Awarded to Plaintiff in Ill. Federal Depakote Birth Defect Trial', June 2017·Archived copy
- 4.Insurance Journal, 'Illinois Jury: AbbVie Must Pay $15M in Depakote Birth-Defect Case', June 12, 2017·Archived copy
- 5.Drugwatch, 'Jurors Award $15 Million in Depakote Lawsuit', June 13, 2017·Archived copy
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