Contaminated Heparin Lawsuit News

Heparin Side Effects Lawsuit News : Contaminated Heparin Lawyer

Baxter lawsuits spike two years after heparin recall

 

-Medill Reports

01/18/2010 - Recent weeks have witnessed a spate of lawsuits against the pharmaceutical company Baxter International Inc. in connection with its previously contaminated batch of blood thinner products.

The company said Wednesday that it expects recently filed class action lawsuits to be dismissed. But, at any rate, they will have no significant effect on the drugmaker’s financials.

Over the past 10 days, 12 lawsuits have been filed against Baxter in federal courts around the country. Meanwhile,more than 50 cases have been filed in Illinois Circuit Court against the Deerfield-based company, according to Bloomberg LP.

In the past seven days alone, Illinois plaintiffs have asked the state court to award more than $2.5 million in damages.

An associate attorney with a Chicago-based law firm representing 106 plaintiffs—said the recent wave of legal actions has to do with the state’s two-year statute of limitations for claims like product liability and personal injury.

“There is a particular time window that Baxter essentially admitted to product contamination,” Mannarino said, referring to the period in early 2008 when Baxter pulled heparin vials from distribution. Mannarino said a number of Baxter executives and employees had already been deposed. “Discovery is ongoing,” he said.

Currently, Baxter does not sell any vial-based heparin products. The company removed specific lots of the drug from the market after an increase in adverse patient reactions in January 2008, according to Erin Gardiner, a Baxter spokeswoman. Baxter voluntarily recalled all remaining doses the next month.

Gardiner agreed with the statute-of-limitations explanation. “Given the two year mark with the first recall, it’s not surprising,” she said of the surge in legal action.

In a March 2008 news release, Baxter confirmed the presence of a contaminate—hypersulfated chondroitin sulfate—in its heparin sodium injection product.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration linked the contaminated batches of heparin, a blood thinner often used in surgery and renal dialysis, to a manufacturing plant in China. During an April 23, 2008, quarterly town hall meeting with employees, Baxter CEO Robert Parkinson attributed the contamination to “some unscrupulous party” who figured out a way to introduce a lower-cost ingredient into the drug’s production process.

Raw heparin is derived from the tissue of pig intestines, and China’s large swine population makes the country a favorable locale for production.

According to FDA data, 78 people died of an allergic reaction or abnormally low blood pressure—the adverse side effects of a contaminated dose—after taking heparin between January and May of 2008.

Even if successful, the lawsuits would hardly deal Baxter a crippling blow.

“It’s not financially material,” Gardiner said of potential litigation costs.

Baxter allocated $63 million to total litigation reserves—less than 1 percent of its revenue—in 2008, according to its annual report. The company would not disclose its litigation reserves for 2009.

Gardiner said Baxter has filed a motion in Toledo, Ohio federal court to dismiss remaining class action suits filed in that jurisdiction. “We expect the remainder to be dismissed,” she said. Most of the recent lawsuits, however, are individual claims.

At one point Baxter supplied about 50 percent of the U.S. heparin market, which generated sales of $30 million in 2007. With more than $11 billion in revenue that year, heparin sales accounted for less than half a percent of Baxter’s revenue. The company’s decision to discontinue distribution of the blood thinner resulted in a charge of $19 million in 2008, according to Baxter’s annual report.

Wall Street, too, seemed to dismiss the idea that the lawsuits would have a material effect on the company; shares of Baxter closed at $60.37 Wednesday, close to its 52-week high of $60.99, reached on Feb. 4, 2009.