New moms suing for birth control packaging mistake that lead to more than 100 unexpected pregnancies. Qualitest, a Philadelphia based pharmaceutical company, is being sued by more than 100 women who claim that the incorrect packaging of the company’s birth control products led to them becoming pregnant.
Qualitest Pharmaceuticals, a subsidiary of Endo Pharmaceuticals, had recalled 8 of its different birth control products back in 2011 because of the packaging problem. It seems that the pills were arranged in the opposite order than that in which they should have been and that this reversed arrangement may have increased the chance of the women getting pregnant as they were actually taking placebo pills instead of the active pills.
Representatives of Endo Pharmaceuticals have since stated that it has only been confirmed that one blister pack was defective. However the new lawsuit is seeking a jury trial and demanding damages for the plaintiffs in the form of the full expenses involved with raising a child, including education costs, all through the child reaches his or her 18th birthday.
The lawsuit was re-filed last week in a Philadelphia state court after a federal judge denied the plaintiffs a request for the filing of a class-action status suit against the pharmaceutical company earlier this month. The lawsuits are claiming that the drugs were both defective and unsafe due to their design, packaging and distribution..
Head of the National Women’s Health Network Cindy Pearson has stated that many generations of women have trusted that the packets of pills that they pick up from the pharmacies will be put together in the proper way and that the fact that these pills were not packaged in the right way has resulted in 111 women becoming pregnant, out of which 94 gave birth.
The birth control products called into question by the suit included either one or several forms of Gildess, Orsythia, Previfem, Tri-Previfem, Cyclafem and Emoquette and had all been manufactured by Qualitest Pharmaceuticals before being recalled by the company back in September of 2011.
Endo Pharmaceutical representatives have stated that patient safety was a top priority for the company which was committed to producing and distributing high-quality products that have been approved for use and that are both safe and effective. The error in the packaging was reported to the pharmacists first and it ended in a recall of 3.2 million blister packs of the aforementioned products by the Food and Drug Administration.
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