Bayer Faces Nearly 1,000 Trasylol Cases in Florida
Bayer faces almost 1,000 lawsuits in a Florida federal district court regarding its anti-bleeding drug Trasylol, according to the docket in the case (1:08-md-01928-DMM).
While there have been sporadic reports in local media of people filing claims against Bayer alleging Trasylol contributed to renal failure, there has been little overall publicity to what is clearly a massive multi-district litigation effort going on in Judge Donald Middlebrooks’ Southern District federal court.
The above docket shows 952 cases. Not all of those are Bayer Trasylol cases, but the vast majority are. In addition, as BNET has previously noted, cases are being filed in state courts all over the country. They all allege something similar: That a patient went in for surgery, was given Trasylol to prevent bleeding, and suffered renal failure or some other complication as a result.
An anonymous source tells BNET:
Bayer now has close to a 1,000 lawsuits related to Trasylol (consolidated into federal multi-district litigation (MDL) in Florida), plus an unknown but not insignificant number in state courts. Many of these are expected to be dismissed due to the expected difficulty with proving causation. The first trial is expected in March next year.
Bayer has denied that Trasylol is more risky.
On the federal court’s system’s PACER web site, some of the cases have already been dismissed. But Bayer is still in the process of replaying to may of the complaints.
The litigation is so massive that plaintiffs no longer have to write their own complaints. They can use a short-form complaint that is only four pages long. Plaintiffs simply check the boxes on it to allege their injuries.
Jim Edwards, a former managing editor of Adweek, has covered drug marketing at Brandweek for four years, and is a former Knight-Bagehot fellow at Columbia University's business and journalism schools. Follow him on Twitter or send him an email.
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