WILMINGTON, Del. (Legal Newsline) – A man who sought to cure his insomnia and instead ended up impotent can’t sue the maker of the medication he took – a drug known to cause prolonged erections as a side effect.
Delaware Superior Court Judge Paul Wallace ruled for Teva Pharmaceuticals on Jan. 15 in the lawsuit brought by Daniel Camejo, a California man who used Trazodone in 2017 and developed priapism. He didn’t know the condition was a side effect and didn’t seek medical attention for more than 24 hours.
At age 50, he ended up impotent because of it. The drug’s label stated, in capital letters, the risk of priapism that could result impotence.
“Even if Camejo could bring a California-law claim for inadequate warning against Teva, the priapism warning Teva had on its Trazadone label is such that under no reasonably conceivable set of circumstances could liability be found and recovery from Teva occur,” Wallace wrote.
Wallace also ruled for Angelini Pharma, the maker of Desyrel. Trazodone is the generic equivalent of that drug, and Camejo argued the Desyrel warning label was insufficient, leading to Trazodone also having that problem.
Since Wallace applied California law to the case, he noted California does not impose strict liability for failure to warn against a manufacturer that did not manufacture the product that allegedly caused a plaintiff’s injuries.
“And so, in California a generic-drug consumer cannot bring a strict liability claim suit against a brand-name manufacturer,” he wrote.
Wallace also dismissed negligence and innovator liability claims against Angelini. The labels on the two drugs were “far different from each other,” he said in rejecting innovator liability.
“Camejo provides no support, factual or other, to support his blithe assertion that Teva’s label change must have come from Angelini,” Wallace wrote. “And he gives no credence whatsoever to the far more likely event – that Teva changed its Trazadone label at the FDA’s behest.”