Funny, Not: J&J Recalls Sudafed Over a Typo But CEO Gets Bonus Anyway

Johnson & Johnson's (JNJ) recall of 667,632 boxes of Sudafed because of a typo is a symptom of a company working itself into a frenzy as it tries to prove to the FDA that it can get its act together. It is the 17th recent recall the company has staged, and easily the most trivial. Don't worry about CEO William Weldon, though. The board of directors already made sure he's getting millions in bonus compensation despite the mess the company is in.

On some boxes of Sudafed PE, the word "not" occurs twice in the instructions, a double-negative that turns a prohibition into a suggestion: "do not not divide, crush, chew, or dissolve the tablet."

Here's J&J's recall notice, emphasis added (click to enlarge):

There are 3 things going on here:

1. J&J had no choice: If a consumer or journalist had discovered the flub it would have been so much worse for J&J. The company had to head the error off at the pass, so to speak, before it was accused of not (not?) noticing.
2. Sudafed is often used by drug dealers -- and the smurfers they employ and their tweaker customers -- to make crystal meth. Sudafed's active ingredient is pseudoephedrine, and that's one of the building blocks of meth. To make meth, you have to crush the product before cooking it. The typo makes it appear that J&J was suggesting people do that. So it's not just an overreaction to a typo; this is more to do with the special regulatory atmosphere around crystal meth and Sudafed.
3. The company is desperate to get its mojo back after the previous recalls, and the company-wide perfection freakout is affecting all J&J's divisions. Today's recall is at J&J's McNeil Consumer Healthcare unit, but the three recalls prior to that were in J&J's prescription drug divisions: defective injectable pens for Simponi, an arthritis drug; discolored Dermabond skin adhesive; and cracked syringes of Invega Sustenna, a schizophrenia treatment.

Weldon's compensation as approved by the board for 2010

• $1.9 million in base salary
• $1.9 million in "annual performance bonus payments."
• 560,691 stock options at an exercise price of $62.20
• 46,724 restricted stock units to vest in 2014 at the 2014 stock price.
• 1,357,855 "Certificates of Long-Term Performance" worth $5.03 each.

Related:

• J&J Struggles to End Tampon Shortage as Prices Hit $99 a Box on eBay
• J&J Cuts Bonuses of Rank-and-File Employees, Due to Tylenol Recalls
• Confidential Witness: J&J Knew Tylenol Factory Was Failing in 2007