Jun 30, 2008 2:33 pm US/Pacific
Girl, 11, To Testify In Children's Motrin Trial
MALIBU
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Sabrina Johnson, 11, is expected to testify in the trial.
CBS
The father of an 11-year-old Topanga Canyon girl with an illness that left her nearly blind and sensitive to even the dimmest light testified Monday that their lives were upended in 2003 when the girl contracted the illness, which they blame on Children's Motrin.
Sabrina Johnson and her family sued Johnson & Johnson and a network of subsidiary companies, accusing them of putting sales of its ibuprofen painkiller -- worth $1 billion in profits per year -- ahead of the extremely rare possibility that a person can be blinded, or killed, as a result of an allergic reaction that is not mentioned on the product's label.
"That's my little girl, now, every day," Sabrina's father, Kenneth Johnson, testified in the trial of the family's lawsuit as he pointed to a large photo of his daughter clasping blankets tightly to her head as she sat in a dark room.
Sabrina endured a two-week hospital stay in which she was in excruciating pain or a morphine haze, her father said.
"I thought we were going to lose her," Kenneth Johnson said.
Kenneth Johnson, an engineering manager at a top-secret Raytheon government electronics project, said he read the Motrin label carefully before buying it and before dispensing it, and was given no warning that it could cause the severe ibuprofen reaction known as Stevens-Johnson Syndrome.
Johnson & Johnson contends that its product is safe, and that warning labels on the box and inside adequately warned caregivers that they should have consulted doctors if any change of medical condition occurred after giving a young person children's Motrin.
But on the witness stand Monday, a former company executive testified that the firm and its subsidiary, McNeil, knew that as many as 20 people had been blinded, killed or seriously injured by Children's Motrin between the time it was put on the over-the-counter market in the 1990s, and when Sabrina Johnson was given three doses of it in 2003.
Sabrina Johnson is expected to testify during the trial this afternoon.
(© 2008 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Wire services contributed to this report.)
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