Pfizer Italia was sentenced to pay half a million euros, including moral and economic damage, for the side effects of a drug for the treatment of Parkinson's, Cabaser, which caused ludopathy and hypersexuality in a 60-year-old resident in central Italy.
To make known the decision of the Court of Appeal of Milan, which confirmed the sentence of first instance, is the law firm Ambrosio & Commodo of Turin which assisted the 60-year-old.
During the case, the experts confirmed the side effects of the drug, which the man took from 2001 to 2006 and which Pfizer has indicated in the leaflet only since 2007.
The sixty-year-old hired Cabaser from 2001 to 2006. Five years that turned his life upside down, turning him into an inveterate gambler, during which he used 1,802 disposable credit cards to play online, a man who had never before played. Not only that: he was also forced to leave his job in a company from which he had stolen 100 thousand euros, money that he will now return.
"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 "The conclusions of the court last March, with an unpublished sentence now confirmed on appeal - explains the lawyer Renato Ambrosio - come after two complex technical consultations in which the company also actively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 never questioned theexcellent 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, or the indication in the package insert of the adverse reactions: know them in advance ".
The lawsuit started in 2015.
