DEFECTIVE FENTANYL PATCH BLAMED FOR MAN’S DEATH

June 5th, 2020

Patients who need pain medication can receive such treatment in a variety of ways. Pills and injections are perhaps the most common means of administering pain relief, but pain patches containing the drug fentanyl are also widely used. Fentanyl is significantly stronger than morphine, so it’s no wonder that it takes a careful patch design to ensure that patients don’t overdose.

But a woman recently filed a lawsuit against two pharmaceutical companies that she says are responsible for her husband’s fentanyl-related death. The lawsuit names Alza Corporation and Janssen Pharmaceuticals as defendants, and Minnesotans with pain medicine concerns will be interested in the details of the case.

The woman claims a defective fentanyl patch caused her husband’s death. She says he used the patch properly, but blood sampled in an autopsy revealed that her husband had a lethal amount of fentanyl in his system. The wife says the defective fentanyl patch posed an unreasonable threat to her husband’s life.

The pharmaceutical industry is one of the biggest and most powerful in the world, and the woman in this case intends to take on one of the largest pharmaceutical companies around, Johnson & Johnson.

Johnson & Johnson is the parent company of Alza Corporation, the California manufacturer that made the patch in question. The other defendant, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, is based in New Jersey. Both companies will no doubt have aggressive legal advisors to combat the claims of negligence. Anyone who wishes to hold a negligent drug manufacturer accountable will also need a dedicated legal team with experience in obtaining compensation for victims.

To learn more class action lawsuits and how they relate to manufacturing defects, please visit our defective product site. Our firm helps people throughout the Midwest who have been injured because of manufacturer negligence.

Source: KY3, “Woman from Polk County blames drug companies for husband’s death,” Paul Adler, Jan. 4, 2013