Dennis Quaid Files another Negligence Suit over Drug Mix Up

By Kamika Dunlap on May 28, 2010 | Last updated on March 21, 2019

Actor Dennis Quaid is not giving up his legal fight against Baxter Healthcare Corp over an accidental overdose of the blood-thinner Heparin that nearly claimed the lives of his newborn twins. He has filed a second negligence lawsuit.

Dennis Quaid is suing the pharmaceutical company for unspecified damages and alleges that packaging caused the drug mix up and the overdose, Reuters reports.

Quaid had previously filed a similar negligence lawsuit in Illinois, but the case was dismissed in 2008. His latest suit was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court.

The lawsuit claims that heparin and a lower-dose version called Hep-Lock, have similar packaging in blue vials with small print on the labels.

Furthermore, Quaid's complaint says that the company should have recalled the 10,000 unit vials of Heparin and warned medical providers that similar mistakes with the drug mix up had happened previously.

The law of negligence requires that persons conduct themselves in a manner that conforms to certain standards of conduct.

Negligence generally consists of five elements, including the following:

  • a duty of care owed by the defendant to the plaintiff
  • a breach of that duty
  • an actual causal connection between the defendant's conduct and the plaintiff's harm
  • proximate cause, which relates to whether the harm was foreseeable
  • damages resulting from the defendant's conduct.

Quaid, 56, and his wife Kimberly Buffington had twins Zoe Grace and Thomas Boone via a surrogate in November 2007. 

The couple was given 10,000 unit vials of Heparin instead of 10 units of the Hep-Lock prescribed to treat an infection for their newborns.

As a result, the twins were in intensive care in a Los Angeles hospital after the accidental overdose 10 days after their birth.

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