Plaintiffs Questioning Potential Settlement Amounts in Yaz Lawsuits

As of February 2011, Bayer faced nearly 7,000 lawsuits against their Yaz and Yasmin birth control pills and the number of new claims is continuing to grow. It is anticipated that to resolve the litigation, the pharmaceutical company will ultimately need to reach Yaz settlements and Yasmin settlements with up to 25,000 women.Currently the Yasmin and Yaz lawsuit have been centralized for pretrial proceedings in the federal court system as well as several states. In federal court, all cases filed throughout the country are being handled out of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois for coordinated management during discovery, the early bellwether trials and any preliminary attempts to negotiate settlement offers. Similar centralized management for the cases has been put in place for state court cases filed in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

All of the cases involve similar allegations that Bayer failed to adequately warn about the risk of serious and potentially life-threatening side effects of Yaz and Yasmin birth control, such as a stroke pulmonary embolism, deep vein thrombosis or Yaz gallbladder disease. Plaintiffs’ attorneys recently asked Judge Herndon to consolidate several cases for the second and third trials,
arguing that trying cases one plaintiff at a time would “commit this litigation to a lifespan of eternity.” Plaintiffs indicated that there has been no movement by Bayer towards a; Yaz settlement agreement, and suggested that efficiencies would be served by trying several cases at a time after the first bellwether trial.In an order issued August 18, Judge Herndon rejected this request and indicated that the second and third bellwether trials will proceed as originally contemplated and shall be individual plaintiffs.

In May, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) announced that Yaz, Yasmin, and other contraceptives made with drospirenone were being monitored because of fears they might increase a woman’s risk of developing a blood clot more than birth control pills made with a different type of progestin. The Drug Safety Communication was issued after The British Medical Journal reported a two- to three-fold greater risk of blood clots, including pulmonary embolism, in women using oral contraceptives containing drospirenone rather than a progestin called levonorgestrel.