Last week a state court jury ruled on the first trial of a shoulder pain pump case anywhere in the country. The jury found in favor of the injured victim, a 38 year old man, in the amount of $5.5 million. The case was Beale v. I-Flow. Mr. Beale suffered from a condition called chondrolysis (loss of cartilage) in his shoulder following the use of a pain pump after routine shoulder surgery. Marc P. Weingarten, a partner in the Philadelphia office of the Locks Law Firm is investigating a large number of these cases and has already filed suit for one client in Massachusetts. If you have had shoulder surgery, and then used a pain pump, and now experience shoulder pain, clicking in the shoulder joint, limited range of motion, or have been diagnosed with chondrolysis, please call Marc at 215.893.3404 or email him at mweingarten@lockslaw.com, to discuss your legal rights.
Those of us who litigate prescription drug cases have always known that the advertizing done by drug companies borders on the fictional, especially in light of the limited oversight that the resource strapped FDA can muster. But now Glaxo, the maker of the over-the-counter fat-blocking drug Alli, has entered into negotiations with the non-profit group Creative Coalition to finance and produce a “hard hitting documentary” about eating, ostensibly to educate Americans about the causes and dangers of obesity.
The New York Times today reports that a Glaxo Marketing executive said that the pharma giant would enter into a contract giving the filmmakers full creative control over the venture, and leave any decisions as to the importance of Glaxo’s diet drug Alli to the director and film maker. “The filmmakers can make a decision about whether Alli is important,” she said. “We want it to be entirely transparent; we want it to have integrity. It’s a fantastic outcome if people are simply more educated.”
We’re not convinced. Neither apparently are others in the documentary film world. “I’m skeptical that this won’t be an infomercial disguised as an independent documentary,” said Theodore Braun, the director of the 2007 film “Darfur Now” and an associate professor at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts. “I can’t imagine that a company as legally and rhetorically sophisticated as GlaxoSmithKline is going to leave its interests unprotected.”
Neither can we.
