Fen-Phen Litigation

Senior attorney J. Douglas Peters filed a class action complaint against all Fen-Phen and Redux manufacturers who sold their weight reduction pills in the State of Michigan. Also sued, as a class of defendants, were the Michigan physicians who prescribed or gave Fen-Phen and/or Redux to Michigan patients who went on to develop primary pulmonary hypertension, heart valve defects, and blood clot injuries to the heart and brain.

Based on the estimated 1.5 to 6 million people in the United States who took Fen-Phen and Redux, and considering Michigan's percentage of the total U.S. population, we estimate that 6,000 to 8,000 Michigan citizens will suffer serious injuries as the result of ingesting Fen-Phen and/or Redux.

Two studies, out of the Mayo Clinic and Hennepin County, Minnesota, suggest that up to 30% of Fen-Phen users will develop heart valve defects. The focus of this litigation will be a unique Michigan statute, MCLA 600.2946(5), which grants to drug manufacturers (none of whom are Michigan corporations) an advantage never before seen in the history of American law, and not a part of the law of the other 49 states--drug manufacturer immunity from litigation if their drug product was approved by the Food & Drug Administration (FDA).

This legislation was enacted despite the fact that the FDA does no testing. Instead, the FDA relies on manufacturer-sponsored studies. As noted by a leading scholar, "manufacturers have enormous power to influence the formation of government standards, with the result that the standards are frequently political compromises at best." Nowhere is this seen as clearly as in Fen-Phen, where the FDA initially voted to reject the drug, only to reverse their decision after intense lobbying by the manufacturer of the drug, who threatened loss of jobs if their drug wasn't put on the market.

Most of these cases are being, or have been resolved.