90 D
EFINING
M
OMENTS
credo? More than 800 product liability suits were filed over Zomax,
and by 1988 all but 3 had been settled out of court. The settlements
included provisions that barred the plaintiffs from revealing what
they had learned about the drug.
5
In 1986, a second Tylenol episode took place. It, too, cost a
human life, because someone penetrated the triple-protective seal
Johnson & Johnson had introduced after the six deaths from poisoned
Tylenol in 1982. In other words, it took yet another death to induce
the company to stop selling capsule products over the counter. Was
the company’s first response to the first death a case of ‘‘too little,
too late’’?
In 1990, Johnson & Johnson introduced a new fiberglass cast,
using technology that a court