Santa Clara, CATakeda Pharmaceutical Co., the maker of Actos (pioglitazone hydrochloride), has agreed to pay over $2.2 billion to settle outstanding personal injury claims. The lawsuits allege that Takeda's diabetes medication increases the risk for cancer in patients using the drug and that it had knowledge of this but failed to properly warn consumers.
If approved, the settlement would resolve over 8,000 outstanding lawsuits, making it one of the largest settlements in the US for patients suing drug and medical device makers. Each case would see a settlement of roughly $275,000. Any settlement would be the first in the three year litigation over the diabetes drug, Bloomberg reports.
In 2012, a federal jury in Louisiana ordered Takeda and Eli Lilly & Co. to pay a combined $9 billion in damages to a shopkeeper who alleged Actos caused him to develop bladder cancer. That award, the seventh-largest in US history according to data compiled by Bloomberg, was later reduced by a judge, by more than 99 percent, to $36.8 million.
According to court documents, over 3,500 Actos lawsuits have been consolidated for pretrial information exchanges. Takeda is currently facing another 4,500 such cases in state courts in Illinois, West Virginia, California and Pennsylvania.
According to the terms of this latest proposed settlement, only Actos patients who have already sued or who have already hired a lawyer to file a lawsuit would be eligible to participate in the settlement, Bloomberg reports.
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