Levaquin

The pharmaceutical industry is ready to fall off a cliff -- a "patent cliff." Over the next few years, some of the world's most popular and lucrative medicines will go off patent, and generic competition will siphon an estimated quarter of a trillion dollars from drugmakers' bottom lines.

On Wednesday, a Minneapolis jury ordered Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Ortho-McNeil-Janssen Pharmaceuticals to pay an 87-year-old man $1.7 million because its antibiotic Levaquin damaged his Achilles tendons. It was the first verdict from about 2,600 similar lawsuits filed so far.