Instead of issuing a recall, after Johnson and Johnson discovered its Motrin caplets were defective, they hired a contractor to go around the country buy up all the drugs. It was a “secret recall” that left the bad medicine on shelves for months for consumers to buy. Now the Oregon AG is suing J&J. The story broke when one of the guys hired to do the buying faxed regulators the instructions J&J gave him.

They said:

…he was assigned to go into local stores, look for certain batch numbers, and buy the offending packets with a credit card provided by his employer…

[His instructions said]: “You should simply ‘act’ like a regular customer when making these purchases. THERE MUST BE NO MENTION OF THIS BEING A RECALL OF THIS PRODUCT! ”

Walther said he brushed aside questions from store clerks who quizzed him about the volume of his purchases.

When company officials were certain that they had successfully ducked the possibility of a national recall, they sent around congratulatory emails proclaiming “great job” and “major win.”

Oregon sues Johnson & Johnson for leaving flawed Motrin on store shelves [The Oregonian] (Thanks to Brandi!)

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