JOHNSON & JOHNSON AND THE TYLENOL POISONING
A bottle of Tylenol is a common feature of any medicine cabinet as a safe and reliable painkiller, but in the fall of 1982, this household brand was driven to the point of near extinction along with the fortunes of parent company Johnson & Johnson as a result of a product tampering case that has never been solved. On September 29, 1982, seven people in the Chicago area died after taking Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules that had been laced with cyanide. Investigators later determined that the bottles of Tylenol had been purchased or shoplifted from seven or eight drugstores and supermarkets and then replaced on shelves after the capsules in the bottle had been removed, emptied of their acetaminophen powder, and filled with cyanide.
The motive for the killings was never established, although a grudge against Johnson & Johnson or the retail chains selling the brand was suspected. A man called James Lewis attempted to profit from the event by sending an extortion letter to Johnson & Johnson, presumably inspired by the $100,000 reward the company had posted, but the police dismissed him as a serious suspect. He was jailed for 13 years for the extortion but never charged with the murders.
The response of Johnson & Johnson to the potential destruction of its most profitable product line has since become business legend and is taught today as a classic case study in crisis management at universities all over the world.
Company chairman James E. Burke and other senior executives were initially advised to only pull bottles from the Midwest region surrounding the Chicago area where the deaths had occurred. The decision they made was to order the immediate removal and destruction of more than 31 million bottles of the product nationwide, at an estimated cost to the company of more than $100 million. At the time, Tylenol held a 35