Terrible Verdicts Can Have Terrible Consequences

With “Drug Shortages: A Deadly Problem with No End in Sight,“ online news source Daily Finance reports that Teva, the drug maker unjustly targeted by a half-billion dollar Judicial Hellholes verdict last summer in Clark County, Nevada, has ceased production of its safe and effective sedative propofol.   

Hellholes report readers may recall it was single-patient vials of propofol – with FDA-approved warning labels – that were reused (i.e., misused) on multiple patients by staff at a Las Vegas area endoscopy clinic that led to an outbreak of Hepatitis C infections.  Though the clinic’s owner will stand trial on 28 related criminal counts in March, plaintiffs lawyers nevertheless went after the deeper pockets of the drug maker and its distributor instead.  And these lawyers were enabled in their parasitic quest by the patently biased evidentiary rulings of a local judge beholden to them.

That such shamelessly self-serving and costly lawsuits can help make propofol and other life-improving and life-saving drugs and vaccines unavailable should give pause to all those inclined to believe the trial lawyers when they claim such ginned-up lawsuits are aimed at protecting the little guy.  Try telling that to surviving relatives of the little guys who die when they can’t get the drugs they need.