Generic Accutane Defendants At Fault, Too

Depression, birth defects, and inflammatory bowel disease are some of the major side effects of Accutane, but generic forms of the drug – called isotretinoin – come with the same side effects as well. Patients who have experienced these symptoms are filing lawsuits against the companies responsible for the products they consumed, whether the company is Hoffman-LaRoche – makers of the brand name Accutane – or one of the generic forms of the drug.




Judge Carol E. Higbee of Atlantic City, New Jersey is overseeing Accutane cases, and has proposed that lawsuits against Hoffman-LaRoche and generic manufacturers should be combined to make the legal process more streamlined. If this were to happen, Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd, Barr Pharmaceuticals, Mylan Inc, Cardinal Health 409 and Genpharm would all be added as defendants in the ongoing case.
Accutane was pulled from the shelves by Hoffman-LaRoche in a supposedly voluntary recall in 2009. The company cited generic competition as a reason for pulling the drug, but at this point side effects were already being reported and lawsuits were piling up. Companies that produce products similar to Accutane are based all over the world and many offer the drug more cheaply than Hoffman-LaRoche did.  It has been a banner year if you're an Accutane lawyer, as settlments have already been several million dollars in many cases.

Ranbaxy Laboratories is India’s largest pharmaceutical company, while Genpharm ULC is an affiliate of a German pharmaceuticals group called Merck KGaA, but is a major manufacturer of generic pharmaceuticals in Canada. Mylan, Inc. is based in Pennsylvania, and is the third largest generic pharmaceutical manufacturing company in the world. Barr Pharmaceuticals, a sub-division of Teva Pharmaceuticals, continues to manufacture their product Claravis, which has the same active ingredient as Accutane and comes with warnings of many of the same serious and debilitating side effects.
A final decision in this issue has not yet been announced, but the deadline by which parties could comment or object to the combination of defendants was on the 15th of April. A decision in favor of the consolidation would likely expedite the legal process.