When, in 1982, seven people died in the Chicago area after taking Johnson & Johnson Tylenol capsules that had been contaminated with cyanide, the company cleared the shelves of the product throughout the US. Ever since, J&J’s decisive action has been held up as the model of corporate crisis management.

It is now time to retire the Tylenol case study. It is not that it doesn’t contain lessons. It does, and even J&J sometimes forgets them: the company attracted criticism this year for its handling of the recall of its Motrin painkiller.

The problem is that the Tylenol case was more straightforward than most. There was no doubting the seriousness of the threat: people had been poisoned. The contamination was the work of a criminal; the company was not to blame. And while the recall decision was bold, it was not logistically complicated.