September 11, 2011, 08:00:00AM. By Heidi Turner

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Newark, NJ: With Accutane side effects lawsuits pending in New Jersey, many plaintiffs are waiting to see the outcome of a lawsuit filed by a woman who alleges she developed Accutane inflammatory bowel disease. The trial was already found in favor of the plaintiff, but an appeal led to a retrial, which has yet to begin. Meanwhile, other patients who say they were harmed by the use of Accutane acne medication wait for their day in court.

The retrial of the lawsuit filed by Kamie Kendall was supposed to have begun in August but has reportedly been delayed. There is no word on what caused the delay or whether the delay is a sign that the defendant and Kendall are trying to settle the lawsuit. Kendall was previously awarded more than $10 million in her lawsuit against the maker of Accutane, but that award was overturned, with a judge finding that the defendant, Hoffman LaRoche, was improperly prevented from bringing important evidence before the court. The judge then sent the lawsuit back to court for a retrial.

According to some reports, there are thousands of lawsuits pending against the maker of Accutane, alleging the medication caused inflammatory bowel disease. Patients further allege they were not adequately warned about the risk of inflammatory bowel disease by Hoffman LaRoche. In some cases, the plaintiffs say they were teenagers when they started using Accutane to treat their acne—and they developed inflammatory bowel disease at a young age.

Some patients have undergone surgery to have part of their colon or their entire colon removed in an attempt to treat their inflammatory bowel disease. In some cases, because dermatologists reportedly prescribed Accutane to treat mild acne, even though it was approved for severe acne, patients may have been exposed to a risk of inflammatory bowel disease unnecessarily.

In addition to reports of inflammatory bowel disease, Accutane has been linked to an increased risk of birth defects when pregnant women have taken the drug, and an increased risk of depression and suicide. Accutane carries a black box warning alerting patients to the risk of depression and suicide.

The maker of Accutane has lost multiple lawsuits, in which plaintiffs were awarded up to $25 million in damages for their claims.

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