Attorneys representing the two men who developed excessive breast tissue growth due to Risperdal medication filed a brief in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on October 31, urging the justices to expand the statute of limitations for filing their lawsuits.
The brief stated that the plaintiffs discovered the breast tissue growth in their puberty making it impossible for them to notice the link between the drug and their excessive breast growth. The Risperdal label was updated in 2006, and the boys started the medication in the 1990s. Their mothers saw TV commercial warnings about the drug's gynecomastia risks around a decade later and sued Janssen Pharmaceuticals in 2014. However, Judge Arnold New, overseeing the complex litigation center, dismissed the cases, and granted summary judgment to the defendant. A Superior Court had ruled that the plaintiffs were supposed to be aware of the gynecomastia risk of the antipsychotic drug by 2006.
Attorneys involved in the litigation asserted that the issues raised in these two cases affect more than 40% of the 13,500 lawsuits lying in the Risperdal docket. Two coordinated actions have been filed for Risperdal cases: one in Los Angeles Superior Court (Risperdal and Invega Product Liability Cases, JCCP 4775) and the other in Philadelphia (In Re: Risperdal Litigation, March 2010 Term, Case No. 100300296).
