Lawsuit Information Center Blog

Xeljanz is a popular medication that is prescribed to treat patients suffering from rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, and ulcerative colitis. Xeljanz is the brand name for the drug Tofacitinib, which works by suppressing the patient’s immune system to help reduce inflammation in the body. Since its original release in 2012, this medication has exploded in popularity due to its placement of ads on television and in magazines.

Manufactured by pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, the company has raked in over a billion dollars in profit off the hundreds of thousands of people use the drug. In February 2019, Pfizer was hit with an FDA safety warning that linked Xeljanz to an increased risk of blood clots in the lungs and overall death.  This has led to many lawyers, including us, to investigate potential Zeljanz lawsuits.

Months later, this forced Pfizer to put a black box warning on their drug label. This scares off doctors and patients. This is arguably why Pfizer did not suggest to the FDA adding this warning long ago. This warning is expected to put significant stress on the company’s profits as patients avoid the medication and file new failure to warn lawsuits. (The good news for Pfizer is that there warning will prevent many future lawsuits from being filed.)

Much of this blog is dedicated to giving you news on significant court cases that take place throughout the country. These cases are not your typical Judge Judy, small claims type deals; they are pretty important. Typically, big personal injury cases usually manifest themselves in class actions, Multi-district Litigation, and/or mass torts. Although these types of litigation have a lot in common, they are truly nuanced, meaning it takes an experienced attorney to fully comprehend how they work. But of course, it helps to have a basic understanding in the first place. Here is a little bit about how a mass tort works.

Mass Torts – The Basics

You cannot go around defining “mass tort” without defining “tort.” The law school definition of a tort is a “civil wrong,” committed by one person against another that results in injury. The most common tort that we as personal injury attorneys deal with is negligence. However, torts also include assault, battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, trespass, and many more. In most tort cases there is one plaintiff suing one defendant. For example, in a trespass case, the property owner would be suing the trespasser. The same is true of car accident cases where you have the injured victim suing the negligent driver. Of course, the insurance company is usually brought in as a defendant too.

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An opioid settlement is coming.  How much money is in it for you?  If you have suffered, it is a fair question.  But this is a different kind of opioid settlement.

Thousands of counties, townships and local jurisdictions from across the country are currently suing a group of pharmaceutical companies that manufacture and sell prescription opioid painkillers. The local jurisdictions are seeking money to reimburse them for the billions of dollars they have been forced to spend in response to the opioid abuse epidemic. After months of little or no movement in this matter, reports came out last week suggesting that a global settlement proposal may finally be in the works.

The Scope of the Opioid Settlement

I’m not writing many blog posts with an exclamation point in the title. But my goodness.

A jury in Oakland, California this week found Monsanto liable for yet another case of cancer and awarded a couple $2 billion plus more than $55 million total in compensatory damages! Alva and Alberta Pilliod are both in their 70s and have lived in Livermore, a town 40 miles east of San Francisco, for over 30 years.

While living there, they also used Roundup for more than 30 years to keep their home landscaped and unfortunately, both developed cancer. Alva was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma in 2011 that started in his bones and soon spread to his pelvis and spine. Four years later, his wife Alberta was also diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma but hers was in her brain. Fortunately, they both survived and are currently in remission, but the cancer has had life-changing effects on both of their lives and they both have suffered lasting damage from it.