Johnson & Johnson Loses First Levaquin Side Effects Trial

Minneapolis, MNA Minnesota jury recently ruled that Johnson & Johnson must pay $1.1 million in punitive damages to an 82-year-old man who claimed the company failed to properly warn of Levaquin side effects, Bloomberg reports.

The federal court jury in Minneapolis also awarded $700,000 in compensatory damages to the man, John Schedin, who claimed he ruptured both of his Achilles tendons after he took Levaquin. Schedin argued that companies did not properly warn patients or doctors about the risk of tendon damage associated with Levaquin, the news source said.

The trial was the first of more than 2,600 claims made in US courts alleging that Johnson & Johnson failed to properly warn of the drug's risks. The jury in the Schedin case found that the company deliberately disregarded the safety of others, according to the news provider.

"We talked a lot about the responsibility the company had to the general public, as far as safety goes," Zach Rawson, a juror from Rochester, Minnesota, said after the trial. "We felt that they didn't warn adequately, that they didn't use enough means of warning the public, especially the doctors."

According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, the use of Levaquin increases the risk of patients developing tendinitis or tendon rupture "during your treatment or for up to several months afterward."