Dennis Quaid Lends Voice to Sue Drug and Medical Device Manufacturers

Hollywood star Dennis Quaid has lent his voice to an initiative that upholds the patient’s right to take manufacturers of drugs and medical devices to court for medication errors. Appearing before Congress, Quaid described, in an emotional voice, how his newborn twins had narrowly escaped death after an accidental overdose last year.

Quaid was speaking in support of a Democrat initiative attempting to overturn an effort by the Bush administration from providing immunity to companies against lawsuits of this kind if the FDA had approved their products.

Speaking in front of a House committee, Quaid took them through the ordeal that he and his family were subjected to for 41 long hours as they waited for the babies to recover. “Like many Americans, I have always believed that a big problem in this country was frivolous lawsuits. But now I know that the courts are often the only path for families that are harmed by the drug companies’ negligence,” he said.

Quaid’s twins, Thomas Boone and Zoe Grace, almost died after they received 1,000 times the normal dosage of heparin, a blood thinner, at Los Angeles’ prestigious Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. The twins had been admitted there for staph infections last November.

Quaid and Kimberly, his wife, did not file a lawsuit against the hospital. Instead, they opted to sue the manufacturer of the drug, Baxter Healthcare Corp. in a Chicago court. They charged the manufacturer of foreknowledge that the improper labeling had caused death in the case of other infants. According to them, the company did manufacture heparin with new labels, but failed to recall the older vials.

Baxter, in turn, has said the problem was improper use and had requested the judge to dismiss the case on many counts, including FDA-approval for the product.

Quaid has said dismissal of such cases by the court would harm the patients as FDA-approval would automatically influence any decision the court wished to make. Quaid said, “I believe that if pre-emption of lawsuits is allowed to prevail, it will make all of us – the public – uninformed and uncompensated lab rats.”

Even some of the Republicans were in awe of Quaid’s testimony. Republican Tom Davis from Virginia started with an attack on what he called ‘predatory pretrial lawyers’, but soon sympathized with Quaid during questioning. He said, “If this had been my kids, I’d be suing everyone in sight. This should not happen,” and went on to get photographed with Quaid.

The matter of providing immunity to companies with FDA-approved products against personal injury cases will come before the Supreme Court later this fall. Already this February, the court provided relief to medical device makers who had been slapped with personal injury lawsuits.