Laboratory is condemned because medicine generates compulsion to play

bistsarker

The STJ increased the amount of compensation imposed on a laboratory that manufactures a medicine that causes compulsion to play. The decision is made by the 3rd Panel of the court. The company must pay the patient's estate. She used the medication to treat Parkinson's disease and wasted all her assets as a result of the drug's side effects — this adverse effect was not on the leaflet at the time it was used. Diagnosed with Parkinson's in 1997, the patient started using the drug Sifrol, the dose of which was increased on medical recommendation in December 1999. In the period from July 2001 to September 2003, she developed so-called pathological gambling and ended up losing more than R $1 million.

The compulsion ended as soon as continuous use of the Binance App Users Data medication was stopped. The Rio Grande do Sul Court of Justice ordered the laboratory to pay moral damages and 45% of the property loss, as it recognized the patient's concurrent guilt for having used the medicine in a higher dosage than recommended. Minister Nancy Andrighi, rapporteur for the laboratory's resources and the patient's estate — who died during the process — stated that the case must be resolved based on the Consumer Protection Code, as it concerns a consumer accident, in the modality fact of the product, since the medicine would not have offered the safety legitimately expected by the user, due to the lack of information about the risks.



The rapporteur highlighted that, in the case of medicines, the manufacturer has the duty to inform about the risk inherent to their use, as provided for in article 9 of the CDC — whose violation constitutes a product defect and generates the supplier's objective liability for the damage caused. "The fact that a medicine causes side effects or adverse reactions, in itself, does not constitute a product defect if the user has been previously and duly informed and warned about such inherent risks, so as to be able to decide, freely, reflected and consciously , about the treatment prescribed, in addition to having the possibility of mitigating any damages that may occur.