Word: dalkon
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...Grand Hotel in Las Vegas in 1980 (85 dead, hundreds injured), and the collapsed skywalks at the Kansas City Hyatt Regency Hotel in 1981 (113 dead, 186 hurt). Robins Zelle's latest big victory came last fall with an estimated $38 million settlement for 199 clients injured by the Dalkon Shield...
...nickel-size birth control device that sold for $3 and was supposed to be easy and effective to use. But the Dalkon Shield proved a health menace to some users, and it has been a continuing financial nightmare for A.H. Robins, which stopped manufacturing the intrauterine contraceptive more than a decade ago. Robins, whose products include Robitussin cough syrup, Chap Stick lip balm and Sergeant's flea and tick collars, last week reported a 1984 loss of $462 million, giving the company a net worth of minus $128 million. Reason: the lingering and costly legal side effects of the Dalkon...
...Virginia-based company (1984 sales: $632 million) said the loss was caused by the creation of a $615 million fund, the largest in a pharmaceutical liability case, that the company set up to cover pending and future claims filed by women who bought Dalkon Shields between 1971 and 1974. The firm stopped marketing the product in the latter year, following the reported death of a user. Since then, more than 12,000 people have filed suits claiming that the Dalkon Shield causes pelvic infections, sterility and infected miscarriages. The device, which was bought by some 2.9 million women...
Robins, meanwhile, has spent $4 million since last fall on a media and letter campaign to warn women about the devices and say that it will pay to have them removed. So far, it has paid $1 million to doctors and health clinics to take out the Dalkon Shields...
Robins earned profits of only $500,000 on the 4.5 million Dalkon Shields sold worldwide. Nonetheless, that part of its business grew into a legal nightmare of some 10,000 personal-injury lawsuits. So far Robins and its insurance company, Aetna Life & Casualty, have settled about 7,600 of the cases at a cost of $245 million. Last week the company reached an agreement on 198 suits for a reported $38 million...