Lawyers Review Case Management in Yaz Litigation

Currently there are 891 Yaz birth control cases that have been filed in federal courts around the country and consolidated in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Illinois.  These cases are consolidated for coordinated pretrial discovery in what is known as an MDL (multidistrict litigation.  Any case filed in a federal court anywhere in the country is sent to the Southern District of Illinois. At the March 4, 2010 status conference Judge Herndon confirmed that Bayer, the defendant, has produced over 10 million pages of documents in response to discovery requests.  The court continues to work with the parties on protocols for managing the cases. The outcome of these bellwether trials are often useful in allowing the parties to gauge the strengths and weaknesses of their cases, potentially leading to Yaz settlement amounts. 

While cases in the MDL are handled in a manner similar to how a Yaz class action lawsuit would be managed during pretrial litigation, each claim remains an individual case. If the litigation does not resolve during pretrial proceedings, the individual Yaz lawsuits will be returned back to the federal district court where they were filed for a trial. The first trial was scheduled to begin in September 2011, involving a Yaz pulmonary embolism lawsuit, followed by a second trial to begin in January 2012, involving a gallbladder lawsuit, with a third trial scheduled to begin in April 2012, involving a venus thromboembolism, such as a deep vein thrombosis lawsuit. However, in April 2011, the trial dates were continued and it is unlikely the first trial will begin before early 2012.

In a New Jersey order dated February 9, 2010 (and posted to the New Jersey website on February 18, 2010) , Chief Justice Stuart Rabner ordered that all pending and future state court actions regarding the birth control pills would be designated as a mass tort and assigned to Bergen County Judge Brian R. Martinotti. Furthermore, Judge Martinotti will oversee those cases and may return them to their original counties as he sees fit (presumably for individual trials after common work is completed).