Yaz shotgun-style lawsuit

August 26th, 2009. By AbiK

So we just posted about Kerry Sims, the woman who’s recently filed a lawsuit against Bayer’s Yaz birth control pills. Ms. Sims alleges she suffered a blood clot in her lung and an infection surrounding the clot while on Yaz.

But here’s the interesting twist—the one that brings “shotgun style” to mind. In true git ’em all fashion, she’s not just suing Bayer, the maker of Yaz and Yasmin oral contraceptives, she’s also naming Walgreen’s in her suit. As reported in the Madison Record yesterday,

“In selling, Yaz/Yasmin to plaintiff, Walgreens expressly and impliedly warranted that Yaz/Yasmin was safe for its intended use, was free from manufacturing or production defects, and would perform as indicated,” Sims’s suit states.

While this is not unusual practice—i.e., to include other seemingly uninvolved or not-at-fault parties into a lawsuit—it does paint an interesting picture when the focus of the lawsuit is such a widely prescribed and used drug, such as Yaz and Yasmin. And, as Lucy pointed out in her quote from bloomberg.com, we’re not talking chump change—this franchise (Yaz, Yasmin and Yasminelle) was worth $1.86 billion in sales for Bayer in the first quarter alone.

Think about it, you can get a prescription filled at your local drugstore, Target, Wal-Mart, your grocery store—and plenty of doctors readily hand out sample “starter packs”. So should a drugstore be held accountable in such a situation? Let’s blow this baby out a bit more—what about the advertising agencies? Yaz’ marketing and advertising have been at the heart of their legal woes. It just makes you ask the question…

I think back to other recent lawsuits like Hydroxycut, Levaquin, Paxil, Reglan, Heparin…the list goes on and it adds up to quite a bit of potential vulnerability…We’ll have to see how Ms. Sims’ case plays out.

Tags: Yasmin, Yaz

This was posted on Wednesday, August 26th, 2009 at 4:26 pm and is filed under Drugs/Medical . Feel free to respond, or trackback. Read our comments policy.