Xarelto Lawsuits on the Rise

Philadelphia, PADue to a flood of Xarelto complaints, Judge Eldon Fallon in the Multi-District Litigation is extending the filing deadline by another 90 days, adding to more than 7,000 cases pending in the Eastern District of Louisiana.

The first bellwether trials for those cases are slated for next February. Meanwhile, almost 1,000 cases in the Philadelphia mass tort are scheduled for next August. All of these cases claim that the Xarelto manufacturers, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, and distributors -- sold in the US by Johnson & Johnson and overseas by Bayer-- knowingly put patients at risk for uncontrollable bleeds.

Since the FDA approved Xarelto in 2011 as a blood thinner to replace the popular Coumadin, thousands of patients have suffered serious life-threatening side effects. But Janssen chose not to warn health professionals or the public about the risks. Instead, drug profits soared as celebrities such as golf legend Arnold Palmer endorsed the drug on TV commercials. A number of plaintiffs in their Xarelto lawsuits claim that Janssen deliberately used misleading marketing and advertising to sell their blood thinner.

As well, an investigation regarding use of a defective medical device that was used in Xarelto clinical trials may have resulted in false data during the clinical trials by showing Xarelto to be more effective than it really was. This data was also sent to reputable medical journals, according to the New York Times (May 2016).Lawyers for Xarelto plaintiffs claim that the esteemed New England Journal of Medicine left out critical data in the drug’s analysis.

According to the Times Xarelto had nearly $2 billion in United States sales last year and is the best seller in a new category of drugs seeking to replace warfarin, an older blood thinner.