Jason tells the story of young parents whose little boy was given a medication that was being illegally marketed for use by children. Our case gave them the chance to stand up to one of the wealthiest companies in the world and fight for their son.
Terry Yount and his wife are from a small town in Tennessee. Terry is a local mechanic. His wife, she worked in the local chicken plant. When their son was younger, they were worried about some behavioral issues: trouble following authority, trouble getting along with other kids. So they took him to the doctor, just like a normal parent would.
What they didn't know at the time was that their doctors had been illegally promoted a drug called Risperdal by Johnson & Johnson, and they gave him this drug because the doctors were lied to and convinced that this drug might actually give their son the hopes of getting better.
Unfortunately, what was never told to the doctors, and what Johnson & Johnson never told the Food and Drug Administration, the medical community, what they never told anybody, was that this drug affects brain chemistry. It affects the hormones that go in and out of our bodies so it would cause young boys to grow female breasts.
And so this poor child, this innocent child, was prescribed a drug that deformed him. So instead of helping him, it made it worse. When Terry found out that this drug company had lied, he was rightfully mad. He would do what any father would do, which is stand up and face down one of the most powerful companies in the world.
Johnson & Johnson's not a Fortune 500 company. It's like a Fortune 10 company. They have operations all throughout the world. They have billions and billions of dollars in revenues. They are one of the largest, most powerful companies in the world. And so Terry asked us to help him hold Johnson & Johnson accountable.
So Terry and his family came from Tennessee all the way up to Philadelphia because we had to try the case in Johnson & Johnson's backyard, on their home court. So, we went to Philadelphia, and we tried the case, and we tried it for weeks and weeks and weeks. The drug company said "We don't accept responsibility. We don't believe that you can prove that our drug caused these problems." Terry sat by me every single day in the courtroom. When Terry had the opportunity from the witness stand to tell the jury, to tell the judge, and tell Johnson & Johnson what they had done to him, it was one of the most powerful things I've ever seen in a courtroom.
A father getting to stand up and stand up for a child that couldn't stand up for himself. To stand up to a big company, and to ask the jury to do the right thing.
And that jury, it did the right thing.
We got the largest verdict in history of Pennsylvania, one of the largest verdicts in the history of jury trials in the United States. You think they'd know by now, but when someone tells us that we can't do it, you can bet that we're going to do it. No matter what obstacles are in our way. We won't stop until we make the wrong right.
No matter what.
