Jury deciding if pain patch leaked, killing man, 28
By JANE MUSGRAVE
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
WEST PALM BEACH — Having survived a horrific car accident, Adam Hendelson was killed by medicine that was supposed to help him deal with lingering pain, a federal jury was told Monday.
Instead of releasing a small amount of a powerful drug into his system to deaden his pain, a patch produced by pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson leaked, delivering a fatal dose to the 28-year-old Deerfield Beach resident, attorney Jim Orr said during his closing arguments in U.S. District Court.
"Clearly this patch did not perform as designed because it killed Adam Hendelson," Orr said. "It definitely malfunctioned."
Lee Hendelson of West Palm Beach should be awarded millions for the loss of his son, Orr said.
"Millions of dollars would be appropriate," said the attorney from Dallas. "Whether it's $5 million or $3 million or $10 million, that's in your hands."
Attorneys representing Alza Corp., a subsidiary of the Cincinnati-based company, countered that Hendelson's 2003 death was a tragic accident. But, they said throughout the two-week trial, it can't be blamed on the patch, which they claimed millions have used without ill effect.
Miami attorney William Upshaw told the jury of six women and two men that Hendelson overdosed on the combination of drugs he was taking, not because the Duragesic patch leaked.
In addition to the patch, which contained fentanyl, a painkiller 100 times more potent than morphine, Hendelson was taking antidepressants. It proved to be a deadly combination, Upshaw said, referring to an autopsy report by Broward County's medical examiner.
"He was a man in pain," Upshaw said of Hendelson who shattered his hip in a 1996 traffic accident and was struggling to deal with the effects. "What happened to Mr. Hendelson was not a defective patch, it was a mistake in his medication."
Concern about the safety of the patch spurred the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2005 to issue a public health advisory, requiring manufacturers to include detailed product safety information with the medication and to alert doctors of the dangers of using the fentanyl patch in combination with other drugs.
A jury in Houston last summer became what was believed the first in the nation to find the patch defective when it ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay $772,500 to the daughter of a Texas woman who died after her pain-killing patch leaked. About 100 similar cases have been filed nationwide.
Like Hendelson, the Texas woman was using the patch to deal with the pain of injuries she suffered in a car accident. Like Hendelson, the woman had highly elevated levels of fentanyl in her blood system, which Johnson & Johnson attorneys blamed on "postpartum redistribution."
They offered the same explantion for why Hendelson's levels were nearly five times above what is considered safe.
The jury is to resume deliberations this morning.
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