Ezagui v. Dow Chemical Corp.

Ezagui, the mother of an infant, brought a products-liability and medical-malpractice suit against multiple parties, including Parke-Davis (defendant), the manufacturer of a quadruple antigen vaccine, Quadrigen, when the infant contracted encephalopathy after it received the vaccine in January 1961. The district court dismissed the suit against some of the parties, including Dow, and Ezagui appealed. Ezagui alleged that Quadrigen was unreasonably dangerous and therefore defective, and that the vaccine was the proximate cause of her infant contracting encephalopathy. Evidence produced at trial showed that Quadrigen, which combined vaccines for diphtheria, tetanus, polio, and pertussis, required a change in preservative from what had been used in a triple vaccine, DTP, for pertussis, diphtheria, and tetanus, which had no increase in toxicity or reactivity. Quadrigen’s preservative, however, was shown to cause certain endotoxins in the pertussis vaccine to leak from the bacterial cell into the fluid that was injected. One of the endotoxins was known to cause a fever, which could lead to convulsions and brain damage—like what occurred to the Ezagui infant. From the time a marked increase in adverse reactions to Quadrigen was reported by doctors and investigated by Parke-Davis, which was before the Ezagui infant was vaccinated, Parke-Davis personnel were on record as believing that the leakage of these endotoxins was the cause of the measured increase in adverse medical reactions with Quadrigen. That increase led to the withdrawal of Quadrigen from the market in November 1962.