The appeal of a jury award in a Risperdal gynecomastia lawsuit will give the Pennsylvania Superior Court a chance to decide whether punitive damages will be allowed in similar trials.

Plaintiff Timothy S. won a $500,000 jury award after raising allegations that the psychiatric medication Risperdal had caused him to suffer male breast growth, known clinically as gynecomastia.

The award was later increased by over $35,000 due to delay damages.

The jury found that Risperdal manufacturer Janssen Pharmaceuticals had failed in its duty to warn about the risk of Risperdal breast growth, and that Timothy’s gynecomastis was attributable to the company’s negligence.

Documents filed in the Risperdal gynecomastia lawsuit say that Timothy had been prescribed Risperdal from 2006 to 2009 to help treat the symptoms of his Tourette’s syndrome. He alleged his gynecomastia developed as a result of that treatment.

Timothy argued that Janssen had ample information about the possibility of Risperdal breast growth, yet failed to disclose that information to doctors and patients.

In his own opinion issued after the jury’s verdict, trial judge Kenneth J. Powell has encouraged the Superior Court to uphold the jury’s decision. Judge Powell says that defendant Janssen’s argument that the verdict was not adequately supported by the evidence has no merit.

The Philadelphia Risperdal Gynecomastia Lawsuit Program

Timothy’s Risperdal gynecomastia lawsuit is one among many that have been pending in a mass tort litigation program in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas.

So far, three other such cases have gone to trial. Timothy’s $500K award has been the smallest among the plaintiffs’ verdicts. Another plaintiff was granted $2.5 million in damages, and a third was awarded $1.75 million.

The trial judge reduced the last of these awards to $680,000 upon the defendant’s motion for remittitur.

In the fourth case to go to trial, the jury was not satisfied that Risperdal was the culpable cause of the plaintiff’s male breast growth. However, they did Janssen had negligently failed to warn about Risperdal breast growth.

In addition to allegations about Risperdal breast growth itself, plaintiffs in these claims allege Jansssen and J&J unlawfully promoted Risperdal for use in younger patients at a time when it had only been FDA-approved for use in adults.

Evidence presented in one Risperdal gynecomastia lawsuit included testimony from one former J&J sales manager. The manager said that J&J had trained its salespersons to promote Risperdal for use in children as early as 2003, before it had received FDA approval for use in children.

The company’s marketing of Risperdal was also at issue in a massive investigation by the attorneys general of dozens of states. Among other allegations, state officials accused J&J of withholding information about dangerous side effects of some of its drugs, including the gynecomastia associated with Risperdal.

That investigation ended in August 2012 when Janssen and J&J agreed to pay $181 million in settlement.

Similar investigations in other states also resulted in settlement payments. An investigation by the state of Texas ended in a $159 million settlement, and another by Montana was settled for $5.9 million.