Yasmin and Yaz Litigation “Wearing Everyone Down”

East St. Louis, ILNot only are several thousand women who have filed claims alleging serious Yasmin side effects frustrated by Bayer’s litigation strategy, or lack thereof: Federal Judge David Herndon issued a case management order on February 13, accusing Bayer of attrition, or wearing people down, as part of its defense strategy.

Judge Herndon said that Bayer’s lack of good faith negotiations has left thousands of women’s Yasmin and Yaz claims unresolved. While the court docket shows 3,447 open MDL 2100 actions, Bayer says its records indicate about 2,000 cases involving 2,500 alleged users are pending in this MDL. The drug company argues that some plaintiffs with filed cases never consumed a birth control pill containing drospirenone, that a substantial number of plaintiffs have duplicate cases pending, and 100 gallbladder cases have not gone through the gallbladder resolution program.

In Judge Herndon’s order, he made a point of saying that Bayer refused to waive venue requirements that has disallowed the Court to establish a bellwether process for selecting a series of trials in the MDL and speed up the proceedings. He has now remanded groups of cases back to U.S. District Courts nationwide for individual trials to proceed later this year.

Judge Herndon since 2009 has had more than 12,000 claims centralized as part of the MDL in the Southern District of Illinois. Of those 3,447 cases mentioned above, most involve arterial thrombotic events (ATE) or patent foramen ovale (PFO) injuries, which Bayer has avoided settling. Last December, Judge Herndon ordered 33 Yasmin and Yaz cases involving ATE or PFO be prepared for early “bellwether trials” that could begin by mid-May of 2015.

Now a complaint filed by Pamela Schuchert, a resident of Chester, Illinois, has been set for trial to begin on June 15, 2015, before Judge Herndon. Schuchert claims she had an ATE injury and suffered a stroke after using Yaz. This case is neither a bellwether trial nor a “show trial.” Rather, the judge said it is a “simple scheduling of trial in a case that has not settled and is ready to go before a jury for resolution.” (Schuchert v. Bayer Healthcare Pharmaceuticals Inc. et al., 3:10-cv-11979.)