› $4.85 Billion settlement in drug case
Two lawsuits were recently filed against Mylan Pharmaceuticals Inc., Actavis Group, Actavis Totowa LLC, Mylan Bertek Pharmaceuticals Inc., and UDL Laboratories Inc., makers and distributors of the heart medication Digitek, also known as digoxin, on behalf of patients who took Digitek prescribed by their physicians and as a result suffered complications and died, according to the West Virginia The Record.
Actavis Inc. has signed a proposed consent decree agreeing to fix the manufacturing problems at its New Jersey plant where it produced and sold the heart drug, Digitek, a brand of digoxin, according to the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
U.S. District Judge Joseph Goodwin, who is striving to resolve the national litigation over Digitek, wants separate complaints from separate plaintiffs. On December 2, he signed an order stating that all Digitek attorneys who have numerous plaintiffs in single suits must separate the claims.
On October 8, John Dingell (D-MI), chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce, and Bart Stupak (D-MI), chairman of that committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, wrote a letter to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Andrew C. von Eschenbach to request more information concerning the FDA’s procedure for examining manufacturing facilities of the generic drug manufacturer Actavis after several of the company’s products were recalled.
