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04 May 2021 Pfizer Italia will have to compensate biological damages due to temporary disability for six years and economic damages to a patient who from 2001 to 2006 took the drug 'Cabases' produced by the US pharmaceutical company for the treatment of Parkinson's for uncontrollable side effects that the drug caused him, including ludopathy and hyper sexuality, forcing him to resign from work. This was decided last Friday by the Court of Appeal of Milan which confirmed the decision of the Court of Milan in March 2020 which had "ascertained the responsibility of Pfizer Italia in determining the side effect of gambling addiction for hiring Cabases", condemning thepharmaceutical company to compensate about 200 thousand euros for moral damages and about 300 thousand euros for economic damages, in addition to interest.
The patient, a sixty-year-old resident in central Italy, 40 at the time of the onset of the disorders, in 2015 turned to the Court of Milan claiming that the adverse reactions for many years before taking the product were known in scientific literature and companies and which had nevertheless only been added to the package insert in 2007. In five years, the patient had purchased 1,802 disposable credit cards to play online and stole over 100,000 euros from the company.
The cardinal principle affirmed by the appellate magistrates of Milan is that any pharmaceutical company in order to clear itself must "demonstrate rigorous observance of all the trials and protocols required by law before the production and marketing of the drug" and, as also confirmed by the Supreme Court " to have provided adequate information about the possible undesirable effects from the same, updating it, if necessary, in relation to the evolution of the research ".
"The first symptoms appeared a few months after taking the drug - the man told the judges - I became over-excited on a sexual level, then I started playing, I thought I was crazy".
"The conclusions of the court last March, with an unpublished sentence now confirmed on appeal - explains the lawyer Renato Ambrosio - come after two complex technical consultations in which the company also actively participated with its own expert, without however convincing the qualified experts of the judge ".
"The information was missing and for a long time the leaflets completely omitted this vital information", adds Chiara Ghibaudo, a lawyer of the same law firm. "We have never questioned the excellent action from a medical point of view also recognized by our client - underlines Stefano Bertone, another lawyer who dealt with the case - but simply the defect due to the lack of a fundamental quality, that is the indication in package insert of adverse reactions: users need to know them in advance ".