LAS VEGAS -- October 10 is a day Anne Arnold will remember.
A jury found three drug companies - Teva Parenteral Medicines Incorporated, Baxter Healthcare Corporation and McKesson Corporation - liable for distributing 50 and 100 milliliter vials of an anesthetic used during colonoscopies. The drug companies were found liable in two separate trials because the size of the vials was larger than necessary for a single use.
The Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada re-used vials of that anesthetic during colonoscopy procedures, causing the hepatitis C outbreak that infected Arnold.
Despite the legal victory, she and two other victims - Richard Sacks and Anthony DeVito - must still live with the same sentence the rest of their lives – a hepatitis C infection.
"This is hell. It's no joke," Arnold said. "At first, I didn't know what I was angry at, who I was angry at, until I found out the details."
She requires a cane and takes 18 pills and two shots a day, but she still feels harmful. Her husband has stage 3 to 4 lymphoma.
"I thought I had given my husband a death sentence, because his immune system is depleted," she said.
"If the Teva president/CEO or vice president is watching and listening, you are cowards," said plaintiffs' attorney Robert Eglet. "You need to come to this community and make this right. You infected hundreds of people with hepatitis C for a vial that you knew was dangerous."
A court decision in her favor gives Arnold millions of dollars, but she says she would trade it in a heartbeat to be healthy again.
"I don't want anyone to go through this," she said. "It's not right, and they know it's not right. They need to fix it, and they need to fix it now."
Arnold's attorney says the drug companies were initially offered a settlement of $4.9 million in this case. They turned it down and instead will pay more than $180 million.
The drug companies maintain they didn't do anything wrong despite losing all three trials related to the outbreak so far.
