Yaz, Yasmin, and Ocella Birth Control Lawsuits
-TheDailyNews
12/10/2009 - The latest “problem drug” TV commercials about Yaz, Yasmin and Ocella – which are known to cause blood clots, strokes and even death in some women – have been tough to miss.
The birth control pills are manufactured by Bayer Healthcare and Barr Laboratories.
Meanwhile, attorneys have seen “several dozen cases and we get more every day,” said one lawyer of a mass tort litigation group, which is primarily responsible for handling the multitude of cases.
However, because of their sheer volume, the cases are being handled as multidistrict litigation.
Here is how the process goes.
The federal court system, in order to deal with the volume of cases that are being filed, gathers them all together in front of one federal judge (in Illinois). That’s called a multidistrict litigation. Once they’re in that process, the cases are still technically individual cases, but … the judge appoints a steering committee of just a few plaintiffs’ lawyers who handle discovery against the defendant, so the defendant doesn’t have to give a thousand depositions if there are a thousand cases.
They can turn over the documents once, give their depositions once, and then the plaintiffs would share the information.
The cases are filed in the districts where victims live and are transferred to Illinois, where the federal Judicial Panel for Multidistrict Litigation has chosen to consolidate them.
The panel picks a judge who they think is qualified and has room on his docket to handle the load. The parties usually suggest someone, but then the federal judicial panel will select who they think it ought to belong to, and that’s where it goes.
The idea is that somewhere way down the line, either the case settles on a global basis like Vioxx or some of the other cases that have settled, or they get remanded back to (the district) they came from for trial.
Sad stories
The women filing the suits range in age from early teens to their 30s and 40s.
You can be placed on birth control for a number of reasons other than birth control, but it’s really hard to sit down with a family with a daughter who’s had a serious health complication at a young age, and now she has to deal with the consequences of that.
Yaz, Yasmin and Ocella have specifically been associated with heart attack, stroke, pulmonary embolism (blood clots in the lung), gallbladder complications and sudden death. The drugs are prescribed for birth control reasons and also “to treat moderate acne and treat pre-menstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD)
The active ingredient in all three drugs is drospirenone, which makes those medications carry nearly twice the risk of blood clots compared to other birth control pills. Drospirenone is also linked to gallbladder problems.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2008 sent a letter to Bayer and Barr, warning them their advertisements of the drugs were misleading. This year, Bayer was required to produce a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign to accurately state the risks of the medications.
The most common complaints attorneys see are gallbladder disease and blood clots, and also a few cases involving heart attacks or strokes.
With looking at injuries there’s a pretty broad range of medical expenses. Sometimes they have a gallbladder removal and there’s no complications and it’s relatively straightforward. But then, if there are complications and you get into blood clots, that causes other problems, the expenses can be really high.
“So we just have to analyze each case on its own merit, but we obviously seek medical expenses, the woman’s pain and suffering for what they’re going through, mental anguish, and in the wrongful death cases, we’d seek their loss of enjoyment of life.”
Doctors who prescribed the medications aren’t being held liable. No type of medical malpractice suits are being filed because many doctors did not know the risks when they prescribed the drugs.
Some of the new studies that came out that really brought this to everyone’s attention kind of make it easier for doctors to say, ‘Ah-ha, I was having trouble figuring out why this was, and now it’s easier to see. In many cases a lot of doctors themselves feel a little let down that they weren’t given more information about the drug before they started prescribing it.
Test of endurance
The first hearing on the cases was just a couple of weeks ago, when lawyers started getting to know Chief Judge David Herndon, who appointed a steering committee to direct the discovery process against the defendants.
It’s a long process because it’s a huge company and it was an important drug in their repertoire, so unfortunately these cases are measured in years, not months one lawyer said.
The next step is a status conference, also before the Illinois federal judge, where they will start the process of negotiating what information each party is going to provide as well as the logistics of getting those documents and analyzing them.
One of the most difficult parts of these cases is knowing the victims and their families are counting heavily on the attorneys to maximize a recovery for them.
They really have no other recourse. There’s not an insurance company – like in a car accident case – there’s no insurance company standing by to negotiate with. Either an attorney can help them, or they don’t get help. So just dealing with the responsibility and making sure every woman gets treated fairly is probably the hardest.
f you or a loved one have suffered serious injury such as a Yaz Blood Clots or death while using Yasmin, Yaz or the generic product Ocella, you may be entitled to compensation. Contact the birth control side effects lawyers of Ennis & Ennis, P.A. today for a free nationwide case evaluation. Our experienced attorneys can answer any questions you may have about Yaz, Yasmin, or Ocella side effects or a potential Yaz lawsuit. Fill out the case evaluation form on this page or call toll free: 1-800-856-6405.
