Personal injury attorneys Dwain Dent
and Fred Streck and legal assistant
Gloria Alfaro of The Dent Law Firm
in Fort Worth, were just beginning
their careers when the E-Ferol case
first came before them in 1985.
E-Ferol, a vitamin supplement meant
to prevent blindness in premature
infants, had been on the market for
five months without the Food and
Drug Administration’s knowledge
or approval. First sold to hospitals
in November 1983, the FDA recalled
E-Ferol in April 1984, but not before it
was administered to more than 1,000
infants, killing dozens of children and
injuring hundreds of others.
If not for Dent, Streck, Alfaro and
two staff nurses with the firm, Kathleen
Dahle and Kris Bradbury, the families
whose babies were injured or killed by
E-Ferol might never have known that their
child was given the drug. The FDA and
the drug’s manufacturer informed the
hospitals and doctors about the toxic drug,
but no one told the parents. Jackie White
felt for 13 years that she was somehow to
blame for the premature birth and death
of her daughter, Rachel, until she received
a letter from the firm in 1997 that said
E-Ferol had caused Rachel’s renal failure.
Says White, “That little thing did nothing
but suffer the whole 28 days she was here.”
The letter stunned White and she felt sick,
but the guilt lifted.
E-Ferol, manufactured by Carter-Glogau Laboratories Inc. and distributed
by O’Neal, Jones & Feldman Inc., was
created to fill hospital demand for a water-soluble version of vitamin E that could be
included in a premature infant’s IV bag.
The infants weighed less than 5 pounds,
and it was difficult to administer the
vitamin orally or inject it into the infants’
small muscles. Carter-Glogau and OJF did
not test the drug’s toxicity before selling
it to hospitals, and so did not know that
their water-soluble version of the vitamin
E supplement could cause liver and kidney
failure in premature infants. It’s believed
that it wasn’t the vitamin E that was toxic,
“The facts were always the same:
They had never told the families, the
drug was horrific, and they didn’t want
to give up the names,” Dent says.
but the level of polysorbates needed to
make the supplement soluble.
Carter-Glogau’s president, Ronald
M. Carter Sr., and OJF executives, Larry
K. Hiland and James B. Madison, were
brought up on criminal charges in 1987
for knowingly selling a mislabeled and
unapproved drug to hospitals. Carter
and Hiland were sentenced to nine years
in prison and Madison to eight years. All
but six months of the sentences were
suspended for each of them.
The FDA and the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention investigated
why hospitals had disregarded safety
protocols. Congressional hearings were
held in 1984 to examine the FDA’s failure
to prevent the disaster, and scientists
looked into the toxic vitamin solution’s
effect on the premature infants. Despite
all these investigations, the parents still
had been told nothing.
Dent believed that the guilt of White and
the other parents was too cruel a burden
to carry. The firm discovered it was not just
a few people, but hundreds of people who
had never been told.
A significant turning point in the case
occurred in 2003 when the 2nd Court of
Appeals of Texas in Fort Worth, ordered
Cook Children’s Medical Center to turn over
the names of the parents whose children
were given E-Ferol. Once this happened,
the firm had enough names to file a class
action lawsuit, along with co-counsel
Arthur Brender, in federal court.
After eight more years of litigation, a
federal judge gave final approval in April
2010 for a $110 million settlement with
the insurers of the now-defunct drug
companies. The firm anticipates another
year of litigation primarily involving
insurance companies that refuse to
participate in the settlement or claim
insolvency.
Dent never imagined that the case
would take more than 25 years to
complete, but his firm kept pushing
through each new round of litigation
confident in its position. Says Dent, “The
facts were always the same: They had
never told the families, the drug was
horrific, and they didn’t want to give up the
names.” Streck points out that a lot of time
and expenses were tied up over the course
of the eight-year class action litigation
without ever knowing if the efforts would
pay off. Says Streck, “It was a big gamble,
but it was the right thing to do.”
The team’s perseverance comes from
a strong commitment to the community.
As the kids who survived E-Ferol grew
up, so did the children of Dent, Streck
and Alfaro. The three empathized with
the parents who came to The Dent Law
Firm grieving the loss of a child because,
as Dent says, “these people became
victims just because of timing. When your
own children were born in the hospital
and given drugs in that hospital and then
you see this tragedy happen in your own
backyard, then you’re more committed
to make things better for not only your
family but everybody’s family.”
As much as Dent would like to think
that uncovering and pursuing the truth of
this case would help parents rest easier at
night, he says the E-Ferol case shows the
opposite—you can’t let your guard down.
“You have to stay ever-vigilant to look out
for your family,” he says, “and lawyers hired
by families need to be vigilant in making
sure that they find out the true nature
of the case and hold the guilty parties
responsible.”
