In light of a valsartan contamination recall, a patient has filed a class action lawsuit saying patients who used the blood pressure medication didn’t get what they paid for because of contamination.

Plaintiff Richard O’Neill says that he was prescribed valsartan, and purchased the medication from a pharmacy in Johnson County, Kan. He claims that he consumed medication that was part of a large contamination of valsartan produced in the Zhejiang Huahai Pharmaceutical, a manufacturing plant in China, that caused valsartan to be contaminated with a carcinogen.

O’Neill has filed his valsartan contamination recall class action lawsuit against Solco Healthcare U.S. LLC and Prinston Pharmaceutical Inc., claiming that the companies misrepresented valsartan as being therapeutically equivalent to Diovan, the name brand version of the drug.

O’Neill claims the company knew that valsartan produced at Zhejiang Huahai Pharmaceutical had been contaminated, and continued to market and sell the drug nonetheless. He alleges they did not sufficiently warn patients or the medical community that the drug had been contaminated, and that the contaminant would cause the drug to be less effective, and possibly dangerous.

Diovan and valsartan are angiotensin medications, which means that they treat high blood pressure and heart failure by dilating blood vessels, which allows blood to flow more freely.

In May 2018, the European Medicine Agency reported that a possible contaminant was found in batches of valsartan produced by Zhejiang Huahai Pharmaceutical. The contaminant that was found was N-nitrosodimethylamine, or NDMA. This chemical is classified as a “probable human carcinogen.”

This then prompted a massive valsartan contamination recall, affecting medications that possibly contained NDMA, and to attempt to prevent patient injury. However, many patients may have been injured by the drug before the valsartan contamination recall.

Zhejiang Huahai Pharmaceutical announced that the valsartan was contaminated at the facility after the plant’s manufacturing procedures had changed.

Allegedly, NDMA could have been present in valsartan as early as 2012. So, according to O’Neill, he and other patients taking the drug could have been exposed to NDMA for as long as six years, meaning that for many years, they were not receiving a drug that was therapeutically equivalent to Diovan.

The FDA allegedly requires generic versions of a drug to be therapeutically equivalent to the name bran devotions of the drug to be marketed as such, so O’Neill claims that Solco Healthcare U.S. LLC and Prinston Pharmaceutical Inc. violated federal regulations in selling the contaminated valsartan.

In his valsartan contamination recall class action lawsuit, O’Neill claims that he was financially injured by the drug companies because had he known that valsartan was contaminated, he would not have purchased it, and would have chosen another medication for his treatment. He seeks damages on behalf of himself and on behalf of all other consumers who were similarly injured by their purchase and use of valsartan, and who believed that they were receiving a drug equivalent to Diovan.

The Valsartan Contamination Recall Class Action Lawsuit is Richard O’Neill v. Solco Healthcare U.S. LLC et al., Case No. 3:18-cv-14840-FLW-DEA, in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, Trenton Division.