Houston, TXIf you have filed a Mirena IUD claim, make sure that you are aware of the statute of limitations. And if you haven’t heard from your Mirena lawyer lately, be pro-active - call now. A Mirena plaintiff is suing three Texas laws firms alleging they let her claim lapse past its limitation date.
Crystal Lynn Starling, a Mississippi woman, has filed legal malpractice claims against three Texas “Super Lawyers” firms, alleging they botched her Mirena lawsuit against Bayer by letting the statute of limitations run out. Law firms Matthews & Associates, Pulaski Law Firm PLLC, and Freese & Goss PLLC failed to file her products liability lawsuit by more than two months, according to Law360. Starling first approached the Pulaski law firm in 2013, after seeing their commercials urging women to file Mirena compensation claims. Pulaski took Starling’s case and associated it with Matthews and Freese & Goss.
According to Starling, the attorneys knew that she had surgery to remove the Mirena in 2013. She had the IUD inserted in 2009 and two years later experienced severe pain. Laparoscopic surgery showed the Mirena had moved to the omentum, a layer of fatty tissue that covers and supports the intestines and organs in the lower abdominal area. She had the Mirena removed in 2011 but didn’t know about defective Mirena lawsuits until early 2013.
David Eric Kassab of the Kassab Law Firm is now representing Starling. “It is unfathomable that three separate law firms specializing in products liability lawsuits would have failed to follow one of the most elementary legal principles: File the lawsuit within the statute of limitations," Kassab told Law360. Starling alleges the only reason for the delay is that the lawyers waited to obtain three more clients with similar Mirena complications and therefore could file a mass tort to minimize their own expenses. Her case was filed on May 2, 2014, failing the three-year Mississippi statute of limitations. It was transferred to a multidistrict litigation in New York, where two months later a judge said the statute of limitations should have started when the plaintiff knew the Mirena perforated the uterus, and dismissed her case.
Starling is now suing the law firms for negligence and breach of fiduciary duty, and is asking for more than $500,000 in damages.
Darlene (not her real name) says she had the Mirena implanted in 2010 and had it removed one year later, after an ultrasound determined it had perforated her uterus. She didn’t file a claim until December of 2014 because no one told her about Mirena lawsuits and not everyone watches TV commercials. Even if Darlene did watch the Mirena commercials, and in light of the Starling travesty, there is no guarantee that an attorney will file her claim in time.
“I am mad at my doctor for not telling me that the Mirena could migrate and cause serious complications,” she says. “Why didn’t anyone in his office, the nurse or receptionist even, tell me that I could file a claim? This surgery has cost me thousands of dollars in medical expenses and time off work. I certainly should get compensated.”
Darlene is going to speak with her attorney to determine exactly when the statute of limitations started: in 2011 when she had the surgery to remove the IUD, or last December when she became aware of Mirena lawsuits?
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