LATEST: Actor DENNIS QUAID and his wife KIMBERLY are suing a healthcare company for manufacturing a drug they claim left they twin babies critically ill.
Newborns Thomas Boone and Zoe Grace were left fighting for their lives when they were mistakenly given 1,000 times the normal 10-unit dose of blood-thinning drug Heparin by staff at Los Angeles' Cedar's Sinai Medical Center.
In a lawsuit filed by the Quaids in Chicago, Illinois on Tuesday (05Dec07), the couple names Baxter Healthcare Corp. as the defendant, claiming the company failed to properly label vials of its product - the 10 units-per-millilitre vial of Heparin looks almost identical to the 10,000 units-per-millilitre vial.
The movie star and his wife insist the company executives has been alerted to past mix-ups, but chose to do nothing.
The Quaids' lawyer Susan E. Loggins tells People.com, "They knew medication errors due to product labeling resulted in death but failed to recall the drug. Each year there's 1.5 million medication errors in America - it's a national epidemic."
Loggins reveals the twins, who were born to a surrogate mother last month (Nov07), appear to have recovered from the overdose and "everything looks good".
Quaid and his wife are seeking $50,000 (GBP25,000) in damages.
