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Consumer Safety

THE IMPORTANCE OF CONSUMER ACCESS TO THE COURTS
(The Story of Dennis Quaid’s Children)

     The drug overdose suffered by the newborn twin children of actor, Dennis Quaid and his wife, Kimberly highlight the importance of consumers’ access to the courts. In his testimony before the U.S. Congress, Dennis Quaid detailed his family’s ordeal as a result of a drug manufacturer’s misconduct:

     Kimberly Quaid gave birth to healthy twins in November 8, 2007. When the twins, T-Boone and Zoë, were eleven days old, Kimberly noticed some irritation on T-Boone’s belly button and Zoë’s finger. Lab tests at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center revealed that the twins had a staph infection. The twins were admitted to the hospital and were put on continuous intravenous drip of antibiotics. The next day, a nurse came into the twins’ room to replace the empty bags of antibiotics. The nurse was supposed to clean the IV lines connected to the twins’ arms with 10 units of Hep-Lock to allow the IV to flow freely. Instead, the nurse mistakenly injected the twins with a massive overdose of 10,000 units of Heparin, a blood-thinning medication. This mistake was repeated later in the afternoon when the twins were given yet another dose of supposedly 10 units of Hep-Lock but which were actually another 10,000 units of Heparin.

     Within 48 hours of being hospitalized, the twins faced near-certain death for a medical condition that had nothing to do with why they were hospitalized to begin with. Their blood had become as thin as water. They were bleeding profusely and they were severely bruised from internal bleeding. They were most likely to hemorrhage through a vein or artery, causing massive brain damage or organ failure, eventually leading to death. Although a medication had been administered to counteract the Heparin overdose, it took more than 40 hours for their blood to coagulate to acceptable levels and eventually normalize. T-Boone and Zoë survived their nightmarish ordeal with no visible damage, but no one knows what the long-term effects are.

     Investigation into how the life-threatening mistake occurred revealed that the bottle of the 10-units of Hep-Lock and the bottle of the 10,000-units of Heparin were similar in labeling and size. Both medications were manufactured by Baxter Healthcare Corporation. Heparin had a dark blue label; Hep-Lock’s was light blue. If the bottles are rotated slightly, and they often are when stored, virtually no one can tell them apart.

     The Quaids also learned that the similarity in labels of the two products had led to the overdose of several infants at a hospital in Indianapolis more than a year earlier. Just like in the Quaid twins’ case, the Indianapolis infants were also injected with 10,000-units Heparin instead of the 10-units Hep-Lock that was required. From this medication mistake, three infants died and three others were severely injured.

     The Quaid twins’ painful ordeal could have been prevented entirely had Baxter gone one more step to insure the safety of its drugs – it could have recalled the Heparin with the old labels that were still sitting in hospital shelves all over the country. However, Baxter failed to do so.

     Medication errors are very common and about 100,000 U.S. patients die every year as a result. Going to court is often the only choice that families have to redress the harm done to them by pharmaceutical companies. And often when these families do litigate, they find out that the law is against them. In the end, ordinary people without the money to pay attorneys’ fees up front are unable to get their cases before a judge or a jury. However, there is a more urgent issue facing consumers than the ability to pay their attorneys’ fees. If the FDA and drug manufacturers have their way, consumers may not be able to sue drug manufacturers at all.

     The U.S. Supreme Court is about to decide whether to bar most lawsuits over mislabeled drugs that had already been approved by the FDA for marketing. FDA argues that its approval is supposed to immunize the drug manufacturers of liability for the deaths and injuries caused by dangerous drugs. If the U.S. Supreme Court decides that this kind of lawsuit is barred, the states will have no choice but to follow. This is called federal preemption. “A federal ban on lawsuits against drug companies would not just deny victims compensation for the harm they experience. It would also relieve drug companies of their responsibility to make products as safe as possible,” Mr. Quaid said in his testimony before the Committee.

     If the Supreme Court rules in favor of the drug companies, then it will have allowed bureaucrats and drug companies to take away the consumers’ access to the courts. Because they can no longer be taken to court and, hence, will no longer have to pay million-dollar judgments for deadly and tragic mistakes, drug companies will no longer be deterred from piling up profits at the cost of public health and safety.

     In his testimony, Mr. Quaid went on to ask Congress to pass laws to correct the Supreme Court’s decision should it rule in favor of the drug companies. He pointed out that Congress should even now pass a law to correct the Court’s recent decision that made the makers of defective and mislabeled medical devices immune from lawsuit. Mr. Quaid concluded, “My family blessedly survived a huge drug error, triggered by the misconduct of a drug manufacturer. Others are not so fortunate. If they are denied access to our courts, they will have no compensation for their injuries, and society will lose one of the most effective incentives for safer drugs.”

© Law Offices C. Joe Sayas, Jr.