Two years after the news broke of the hundreds of patients sickened by contaminated steroid solution, lawsuits on behalf of those patients against the company that made the solution and the clinics that bought and administered the injections are coming to life in civil courts.
South Bend attorney Douglas Small is coordinating meningitis-related litigation for Indiana in a multi-district federal lawsuit in Boston against the company that made the faulty solution, New England Compounding Center. Small said he is limited by what he can say about pending litigation, but his firm’s website says the owners and insurers of NECC have agreed in principal to a compensation fund of more than $100 million to be distributed to victims of the company’s actions.
Yet lawsuits against the clinics that bought the solution — against federal regulations, court papers allege — and injected it into patients are just beginning to engender lively fights in court.
Small filed suit in April in Elkhart Superior Court for nearly 70 who were patients of Orthopedic and Sports Medicine Center of Northern Indiana, or OMSC, based in Elkhart. That lawsuit also names the company’s Fort Wayne malpractice insurance carrier.
Three local people died as a result of receiving the tainted solution, the lawsuit alleges: Kathy Dillon of South Bend, and Viola Copsey and Jack Durben of southwestern Michigan.
Court documents outline the results of FDA and other investigations into NECC’s practices. The company closed soon after news emerged about the tainted solution. The local lawsuit says clinics are required by the FDA to buy from a compounding pharmacy only specific doses of a medication ordered by a physician for a specific patient. Companies that produce drugs in large quantities are subject to far more FDA regulation and inspection, which makes the process more expensive.
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