J&J Buys Negative Domain Names on Birth-Control Patch (Update1)
By David Voreacos
April 2 (Bloomberg) -- Johnson & Johnson bought dozens of disparaging Internet domain names about its Ortho Evra birth- control patch, a product linked to blood clots in women, according to company documents released in court.
J&J, the world's biggest maker of health care products, bought and registered such domain names as ``Orthoevrakills.com'' and ``Deathbypatch.com,'' documents released today in state court in New Brunswick, New Jersey, show.
Johnson & Johnson, based in New Brunswick, faces hundreds of personal injury suits around the U.S. over the patch, which the company still sells. The company has not disclosed its revenue for the patch or any reserves to deal with the litigation.
``Women have died as a result of this patch,'' said attorney Jason Mark, who filed a legal motion for patch users that led to the release. ``The communications raise some obvious questions about the company's priorities. They're looking to monopolize the flow of information that's released. They're looking to prevent women from receiving information from other sources.''
One Johnson & Johnson document outlined a nine-step plan called ``Defensive actions to minimize impact of negative presence.'' It included buying domain names, monitoring blogs and purchasing the top five key words about the patch on search engines run by Google Inc. and Yahoo! Inc.
``The documents that were released have nothing to do with the litigation,'' said Kent Jarrell, a spokesman for J&J's Ortho- McNeil Pharmaceutical Inc., which makes the patch. ``The purchase of the domain names is a standard and accepted business practice for companies that are trying to prevent product disparagement and to safeguard the defendant's reputation.''
Documents Released
Superior Court Judge Bryan Garruto released the five documents, ruling they are no longer subject to protective orders that sealed them from public access. He is overseeing 309 lawsuits claiming injuries caused by the patch, which more than 5 million women have used since its launch in 2002.
U.S. regulators warned in November 2005 that the patch may cause clots and expose women to 60 percent more hormones than oral contraceptives. A study in February 2006 showed the patch doubled clot risk compared with the pill.
Johnson & Johnson's shares fell 16 cents to $60.10 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. They have fallen nearly 9 percent this year.
Other patch cases have been consolidated in state court in Illinois and federal court in Ohio. None has gone to trial. The company confidentially settled lawsuits with about 30 women last year, said their lawyer, Ray Chester of Austin, Texas. Users claim they suffered strokes or clots in the lungs or legs.
`Some Settlements'
``There have been some settlements,'' Jarrell said. ``I don't want to get into the number of settlements or the amounts. The company will offer a strong defense at trial, if necessary, on claims found to be without merit or lacking evidence based on sound science.''
Garruto released a 13-page opinion today saying the five documents were not subject to protection because they did not contain trade secrets, and information about the purchase of domain names ``is of little to no value to Johnson & Johnson's competitors.''
The documents include a series of e-mails about the price and details of buying the various domain names. J&J has produced more than 6 million documents in the pre-trial exchange of information known as discovery.
Jarrell said the company wanted to make sure that women and physicians ``are receiving accurate medical information about the patch,'' as required by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
`Masquerade as Repositories'
``Plaintiffs' lawyers have been purchasing their own domain names and have created Web sites which masquerade as repositories for health news for women,'' Jarrell said. ``They really offer incomplete and out-of-context information as part of a campaign to attract plaintiffs to their law firms.''
J&J settled Ortho Evra cases in state courts in New Jersey, Texas, and California, and federal courts in North Carolina and Pennsylvania, Chester said.
One settlement involved Philomena Ugochukwu, 40, who had a massive stroke in March 2004 after wearing the patch for 12 days, he said. Ugochukwu, a mother of two, is now a quadriplegic with brain damage and needs round-the-clock medical care, Chester said. A native of Nigeria who lives in Austin, she was Chester's first Ortho Evra client, he said.
One case was filed by the father of Alycia Brown, a 14-year- old girl from La Crosse, Wisconsin, who died in May 2004. Her federal lawsuit claimed she used the patch for a month and a half before suffering from two fatal blood clots in the lungs.
The documents case is Melissa Kaye Brown and Glenn Allen Brown v. Johnson & Johnson, MID-L-5446-05, Superior Court of New Jersey, Middlesex County (New Brunswick).
To contact the reporter on this story: David Voreacos in Newark, New Jersey, at dvoreacos at bloomberg dot net
Last Updated: April 2, 2007 17:51 EDT
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