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Litigation over the anti-seizure drug Dilantin has developed into a smaller-scale mass tort, with dozens of suits claiming that it causes horrendous and life-threatening skin burns.
The suits allege that the drug, used to treat epilepsy and in hospitals and emergency rooms to prevent seizures following head injuries, causes Stevens Johnson Syndrome (SJS) and its more severe counterpart, Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis (TEN), where a patient's skin literally burns off. These conditions also lead to blindness, internal organ damage and sometimes death.
Plaintiffs are proceeding individually and there are no plans to consolidate the litigation or petition for multidistrict litigation.
Brandon Smith, a plaintiffs' attorney at Childers, Schlueter & Smith in Atlanta whose firm has filed 15 cases and is reviewing dozens more, estimated that about 100 cases have been filed nationwide and the total will be around 300.
While the number of cases may be small, the damages involving the rare but severe condition could be big if past cases are representative.
In October, a lawsuit filed by the family of a 9 year-old girl, Jesse Nichols Jacobson, who died after taking Dilantin for less than a month, settled against Pfizer for $3.78 million.
"It's a nasty disease so there will be very sympathetic plaintiffs. Plaintiffs' lawyers are going to be interested in death cases, especially young kids with high pain and suffering [damages]," said James Beck, a products liability defense attorney at Dechert LLP in Philadelphia who co-authors a drug and device law blog.
The lawsuits name Pfizer, the maker of Dilantin, as a defendant, in addition to eight manufacturers of the generic version phenytoin, including Mylan Pharmaceuticals and Baxter Healthcare.
No cases have made it...