A Philadelphia jury crushed Bayer and Johnson and Johnson earlier this month with a $27.8 million verdict.  The jury awarded $1.8 million in compensatory damages and $26 million in punitive damages.

The punitive damage award is key because Bayer had to be thinking they could win these cases after winning three in a row in federal court.  This resounding victory changes the game.

While $28 million is chump change to these companies.  But these cases could be worth billions.  This gets the attention of corporate.  The value the Xarelto is a big question mark on their balance sheets right now. Moreover, the fear of loss of revenue from these drugs.  Meaningful settlement talks a global class action settlement may not be far away.

The Bard Recovery IVC filter and its ostensibly new and improved cousin, the Bard G2 IVC filter, have been linked to an increased risk of fracture which can cause serious injury or death.

A New Verdict in 2018 That Means Something to You

The big news in these IVC filter cases came in April 2018 when plaintiff scored their first big win.  An Arizona jury awarded a Georgia woman $3.6 million, including $2 million in punitive damages.

Things That Could Hurt You: Prilosec

What is it?

Made by AstraZeneca, Prilosec is the brand name for a generic drug, omeprazole, used in combating acid reflux by reducing the amount of acid produced in the stomach.

Prilosec was the first of a class of drugs known as proton pump inhibitors (“PPIs”), which are prescribed to treat chronic heart burn, acid reflux, and other gastrointestinal maladies. The reason Prilosec works is its active ingredient, omeprazole. Nexium, another drug that has been the subject of a great number of lawsuits, is a big competitor with Prilosec.  There is so much money in PPIs.  The manufacturers of these drugs have been in litigation with each other for a very long time, battling over patents and profits.

How popular is it?

Following its introduction in 1989. Prilosec rocketed to widespread popularity. In 2013, Prilosec sales were $358.8 million – making the drug the second-highest-selling over-the-counter digestive remedy. Prilosec belongs to a class of acid-reducing medicines on which the public spends over $14 billion a year.

The active ingredient in Prilosec, Omeprazole, is a racemic mixture containing S- and R-enantiomers. Enantiomers are molecules that have two Non-superimposable mirror image forms Racemic mixtures, such as omeprazole, contain equal proportions of the two enantiomers. Continue reading

The antibiotic family of fluoroquinolones goes by many brand names, including Cipro, Levaquin, and Avelox. Every year, millions of Americans take fluoroquinolones to treat bacterial infections, including urinary tract infections, pneumonia, and bronchitis. Since the antibiotics work on a number of different conditions, they are popular among doctors.

Surprisingly Diverse Dangers

However, new studies indicate that these medications can also have serious side effects. These studies have linked fluoroquinolone use to risks like peripheral neuropathy. Peripheral neuropathy is a form of permanent nerve damage.  It can result in constant pain and often, limited mobility. In many cases, peripheral neuropathy is irreversible, which means that patients who develop it must live with pain and impairment for the rest of their lives.

Currently, several pharmaceutical companies are facing lawsuits filed by patients who have suffered irreversible peripheral neuropathy after taking fluoroquinolone. Evidence in court documents indicates that drug companies may have known about the nerve damage risks as early as 1996, but they did not remove these medications from the market or alert patients and doctors to the risks.

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Today, a U.S. Judicial on Multidistrict Litigation panel of federal judges will hear arguments on Plaintiffs’ request to consolidate all of the knee and hip infection lawsuits that have been filed in federal court claims the infection was allegedly caused by a 3M Bair Hugger warming blanket.

What These Bair Hugger Cases Are About

A Bair Hugger device is a temperature management system that is used during surgery.  The purpose of the invention is to help the body regulate the appropriate temperature. The Bair Hugger pushed hot air through a hose into a blanket specially made to work with the device. The hot air produced by Bair Hugger accumulates under the surgical drape covering the patient.  This hot air escapes under the surgical drape below the level of the surgical table or over top of it

Bair Hugger Forced Air Warming Device is designed, manufactured, and marketed by Defendants 3M Company and Arizant Healthcare, Inc.
There are more than 50,000 Bair Hugger FAWs in the United States.

How does it work? The Bair Hugger is a portable heater/blower connected by a flexible hose to a blanket, typically positioned the patient getting surgery.

Keeping a patient warm is particularly useful during knee and hip replacement surgery because the procedures tend to be very long.   The body loses heat increasingly over the course of surgery.

Another thing about metal hip and knee replacement surgery is that your body is particularly prone to infection. Why?  The metal helps spread the infection.

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Bad news for Plaintiffs’ in the first liver damage lawsuit involving Tylenol.  A ten juror panel in New Jersey found for Johnson & Johnson (J&J) on all counts on Friday.  This is the first Tylenol liver damage lawsuit to go to trial.  It will not be the last. [See my 2017 update below.  [That “it will not be the last” statement is yet another thing I got wrong, as you will see in the 2018 update below.]

The lawsuit alleged that a 55-year-old woman suffered liver damage as the result of the use of Extra Strength Tylenol.  But the jury seemed to find that the injuries occurred before she took Tylenol.

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Over the past couple of years, I have written about some of the problems involving Wright Profemur Hip Implants. A few cases have settled but nothing game changing that has an impact on the settlement value of the Wright hip implant cases.  But a big verdict in California sends a huge message that impacts the settlement value of these claims.

$4.5 Million Verdict

Wright is currently defending around 1,200 metal hip implant cases throughout various courts across the United States. The first of such to go to trial netted a big verdict for the plaintiff, perhaps giving Wright a taste of what is to come if more go to trial.  If this case is any indication, they can expect financial pain.

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Multidistrict litigation, called an MDL, is a special legal procedure used in mass tort cases to streamline the handling of large and complex cases.  An MDL is a “sort of” class action lawsuit.  It is a class action in that the cases are all brought together under one judge for pretrial discovery.  But typically after a few bellwether trials of individual plaintiffs, the cases are send back to their local jurisdiction for trial if a settlement if not reached.  The hope of the MDL process is that the parties can figure out the value of the claims so a global settlement can be reached with most of the plaintiffs.

The idea of an MDL was actually ‘ idea. The concept was born in 1968 when lawmakers created the MDL system as a way to speed up and coordinate complex litigation that was filed in multiple federal judicial districts. MDLs are utilized in scenarios where a single defendant or group of defendants commits a single tort or does a single act that affects a large group of people. When all of those individual people then go to sue the defendant, it makes more sense to consolidate their cases. This streamlines the process and avoids different rulings regarding similar aspects of the case.

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Frequent readers of this blog will be aware of the litigation against Bayer/Johnson & Johnson regarding their drug Xarelto. The cases are consolidated in federal court as Multidistrict Litigation (MDL), and the presiding judge is moving proceedings along.

• November 2017 Update: we have not lost three of these cases in a row
• January 2018 Update: we just got a huge verdict that will change the course of this litigation forever

Summer 2015 Update

Over the past few years, product liability suits against the makers and marketers of the drug Xarelto, Bayer/Johnson & Johnson, have been cropping up across the country. The suits are mostly filed in federal court, meaning the parties consolidated them as an MDL. Judge Eldon Fallon is the sole judge presiding over the MDL, giving him the ability to make all pretrial rulings. This is the great thing about an MDL; when many different cases are consolidated, the parties can avoid doing the same discovery over and over again, while getting consistent rulings from a single judge.

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