Janice and Jack Potts were visiting friends when Janice realized that she had forget to bring her ChillPill birth control with her. To avoid hassle, her friend Mrs. Poole gave her a different kind of birth control, BabyBan, to take during her stay. Unfortunately, Babyban is completely ineffective in 0.5% of women, yet the package labeling fails to distinguish this fact. Shortly after their stay with the Poole’s, Janice finds out she is pregnant with a child her and her husband may not be able to afford.
There are several issues that make this case difficult. First, it is illegal to transfer prescription medicine to any person other than who it is prescribed, it is imprinted on every prescription label (Valid Prescription Requirements, (n.d.)). Therefore, Mrs. Poole is at fault, however Janice is just as at fault because she took the medication from Mrs. Poole knowing it was by prescription only.
If Janice would have seen a doctor before beginning Babyban, she should have been warned that most birth control is not effective right away, it is advised to use a backup method, like condoms, for at least two weeks (CDC, 2013). Thus, Babyban may have actually been effective in preventing pregnancy in Janice Potts, if she had been outside of the two week window. Even though Mrs. Poole’s doctor had told her about the possibility of ineffectiveness
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Babyban should be held responsible for withholding information from its consumers. “A manufacturer can be found negligent even if the product met all regulatory requirements because, under some circumstances, a reasonably prudent manufacturer would have taken additional precautions” (Bagley, p. 255). In a similar case, GlaxoSmithKline, a large drug manufacture, failed to report crucial safety information on a drug, they ended up having a multi-million dollar settlement (GlaxoSmithKline,