Drug Maker Xanodyne Receives Darvocet Sudden Death Lawsuit
As the Rottenstein Law Group Reported last month, there is a possibility that the family members of those who lost their lives as a result of taking the pain reliever propoxyphene can file a Darvon and Darvocet lawsuit to seek out compensation for their loss. And now that a wrongful death lawsuit has been filed recently inTennessee against the drug company Xanodyne Pharmaceuticals, that possibility has become a reality.
The wife of a Mr. Cornelius Kelleher, Mary Ann Kelleher filed a wrongful death lawsuit in the U.S. District court for the Western District of Tennessee on January 13, 2011 with claims that her husband’s sudden death was due to heart problems caused by the prescription painkillers Darvon and Darvocet. According to the lawsuit, Mr. Kelleher had started taking Darvon and Darvocet on July 30, 2010 for pain relief and was taking them up until his death on November 2, 2010, just days before the FDA made its request to take all drugs containing propoxyphene off the market. The complaint also claims that Xanodyne, the maker of Darvon and Darvocet, knew or had reasonable knowledge of the fact that the drugs had the potential to cause fatal heart rhythm abnormalities and did not warn doctors or their patients of these side effects.
Xanodyne’s study of the drug in question gave the FDA enough information to call of a recall of the drug last November, 2010. The Main goal of the FDA was to test for conclusive evidence that propoxyphene could cause heart problems, and even the research that Xanodyne conducted showed when administered to healthy patients at prescribed doses, the drug can cause cardiac abnormalities. With results in hand, the FDA determined that propoxyphene’s health benefits no longer outweighed its risks and made the request that the drug be removed from the U.S. market. The removal request was first complied by Xanodyne, which retrieved the rights to Darvon and Darvocet from the original developer Eli Lilly & Company.
However, most see it the that FDA’s actions came too late and too little due their inactivity in the matter. The drug’s more vocal critic, Public Citizen, went on record saying that they do not approve of the FDA taking such a long time in recalling the drug which led to the deaths of thousands of people. The most recent 2006 petition of Public Citizen and the one previous to it stated that there was enough data to show that the drug was a cardiac toxin and could cause sudden death. This information is vital since it shows that Xanodyne should have already known of the drugs cardiac risks.
Please visit the Darvon site for more information of the sudden death Darvon lawsuit against Xanodyne Pharmaceuticals discussed in this article