The U.S. Supreme Court today ended pharmaceutical manufacturer Johnson & Johnson’s bid to avoid liability for failing to warn doctors and parents that the appearance of redness, rashes or blisters after taking Children’s Motrin can lead to serious consequences. In 2003, a feverish seven-year-old Sammie Reckis was administered Children’s Mortin by her father. When she received no relief, her pediatrician administered another dose. Sammie was taken to the hospital after blisters began to appear, where yet another dose was given. Blisters soon appeared all over her body, and she was diagnosed with Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis (TEN), a life-threatening skin disorder that is usually fatal. The top layer of her skin began drying and sloughing off in sheets and, to ease her pain, Sammie was placed into a medically induced coma. She suffered heart and liver failure, a stroke, an aneurysm, and a cranial hemorrhage. She is now a tremendously underweight, blind adult. A jury found Johnson & Johnson liable and set compensation for Sammie and her family at $63 million.

Johnson & Johnson, after losing in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, asked the U.S. Supreme Court to take the case, claiming that the state courts ignored clear evidence that the Food & Drug Administration would have forbidden it from placing a warning about redness, rash and blisters on their label and arguing that the Massachusetts decision conflicted with one from the Chicago-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. In opposition on behalf of the plaintiffs, CCL argued that not only did not clear evidence exist that the FDA would prosecute Johnson & Johnson for providing a warning that would have spared Sammie her nightmare, but that subsequent FDA actions requiring warnings about redness, rashes and blisters on the label supported the plaintiffs. Moreover, the claimed conflict between appellate courts was an imagined one, given that the essential holdings of the two courts were the same.

CCL’s Robert S. Peck served as counsel of record on the Supreme Court brief, where he worked with Michael Bogdanow, Leo Boyle, Brad Henry, and Victoria Santoro of Boston’s Meehan, Boyle, Black & Bogdanow, P.C.