Johnson & Johnson was sued last week by a group of consumers for fraud. Patients are fuming mad that J&J’s solution to the Tylenol recall is to offer coupons to consumers for more Tylenol - which isn’t actually available since the company was forced to shut down its principle manufacturing facility. J&J claims that consumers can also obtain a refund. HOWEVER, consumers have complained that when they have requested a refund, J&J has issued them with the worthless coupon instead. How irritating is that?
The usually eloquent Jim Edwards has a scathing review of the Unsolved Mysteries at J&J over at BNET. Among them, Jim Edwards wants to know why McNeil’s head Peter Luther still has his job. To that, I’d ask the question, why does William Weldon still have a job? At the rate this shaping up, I’m betting the J&J board will sack Bill Weldon, Colleen Goggins and Peter Luther before this is all done. However, they need to get themselves a little distant from the poisonings before they can clean house.
This should be an interesting week for J&J. If you recall, back on May 25th, J&J committed to the FDA that it would present the Agency with a full review of exactly how it screwed up and exactly what it would do to fix it by July 15th. This review was supposed to be conducted by an outside consultant and without any internal bias (although it is unclear if it is the same outside consultant who conducted the now famous “phantom recall.”). J&J also committed to being transparent with consumers. I think chances are good that J&J will make the July 15th deadline. However, based on its recent behavior, there’s not a chance in hell that J&J will be transparent with consumers.
I’ll be eagerly watching this week.
