Johnson & Johnson’s flood of product recalls last year stemmed from poor management, staffing cuts and breakdowns in integrating the consumer unit it bought from Pfizer Inc. (PFE), J&J said in court papers. Top executives at the world’s second-largest health-care products company, though, aren’t to blame, J&J said in the filing. The report by a special committee of J&J board members, filed in response to investor lawsuits, said the company’s McNeil unit suffered from “an adversarial relationship” between some quality-control and production staff as well as "an emphasis on production volume” over compliance. The panel urged J&J’s board to create a new regulatory and compliance panel.
