Yaz On Trial : Yaz Birth Control Lawsuit : Info on Yasmin & Ocella Side Effects

Legal news! In a recent Case Management Order (CMO) signed by Judge Herndon, any new plaintiffs in the Yaz and Yasmin litigation can now file their individual cases directly in the MDL proceeding.

As you may recall from our earlier blog post, in October 2009 all federal lawsuits concerning Yaz, Yasmin and Ocella were centralized and coordinated into a special kind of case known as an MDL (MDL is an abbreviation for MultiDistrict Litigation). The purpose of an MDL is to take all pending federal cases throughout the country that deal with a similar issue and transfer the cases to one federal judge for coordinated pretrial proceedings to save time and resources. The MDL concerning Yaz, Yasmin and Ocella is called In re: Yasmin and Yaz (Drospirenone) Marketing, Sales Practices and Products Liability Litigation, MDL Case No. 2100, and it is being overseen by the Honorable Chief Judge David R. Herndon of the Southern District of Illinois.

Before this new Case Management Order (CMO) lawsuits were being filed by women in their state then transferred to the MDL. Now the CMO allows any new plaintiffs to file their cases directly into the MDL, which is a big time and money saver for all involved.

Here’s a blurb from the CMO:
“In order to eliminate delays associated with transfer to this Court of cases filed in or removed to other federal district courts, and to promote judicial efficiency, any plaintiff whose case would be subject to transfer to MDL 2100 may file his or her case directly in the MDL Proceedings in the Southern District of Illinois.”

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Bayer recently released its Annual Report for 2009. The report is 274 pages long. Here are the highlights:

• By Bayer's count, as of February 15, 2010, about 1,100 lawsuits were filed against it by women injured by Yaz or Yasmin (that sure is a lot of people, and most only expect that number to grow in the future).

• Yaz and Yasmin are Bayer’s best-selling pharmaceutical products for at least the second year in a row (this goes back to our post last week about the huge profits Bayer has made from the sale of Yaz and Yasmin over the years).

• Bayer has been creating new versions of Yaz and Yasmin. Bayer has submitted new Yaz and Yasmin oral contraceptive pills containing folate (a natural source of vitamin B) to the FDA for approval for sale in the United States. Bayer is calling these new versions “Yaz Plus” and “Yasmin Plus.” In addition to these new pills, Bayer has also created a contraceptive patch, which it calls “Yaz Flex.” The FDA still needs to approve these new versions of Yaz and Yasmin before Bayer can release them to the market. We will be watching the development of these new products. 

So despite the filing of approximately eleven hundred Yaz lawsuits by women who have suffered life-changing injuries or by their families, Bayer continues to reap huge profits from the Yaz franchise and has plans for new ways to squeeze even more money from the drugs in the future.

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Even though thousands of women have suffered severe injuries after taking Yaz and hundreds of lawsuits have already been filed, Bayer Pharmaceuticals is still airing commercials and running full page ads touting Yaz as the #1 most dispensed oral contraceptive in the U.S. with over 26 million prescriptions filled as of December 2009.

The number #1 most dispensed oral contraceptive in the U.S. – 26 million prescriptions – these things mean money, big money. The New York Times reported that the Yaz and Yasmin franchise had worldwide sales of about $1.8 billion in 2008. That same New York Times article has a graph showing the top-selling oral contraceptives between January and June 2009, which includes Yaz, Yasmin and Ocella in the top five. In fact, Bayer itself has a list of its top 20 best-selling products in 2009, and the Yaz and Yasmin products are number one on that list.

But Bayer wasn’t the only one to cash in on the success of these pills. Teva Pharmaceuticals who owns Barr Laboratories which distributes Ocella, the generic version of Yasmin, has made serious profits off this pill. In this press release, Teva said Ocella was launched in July 2008, and sales for that year were $170.2 million. Just this month Teva reported that its sales in North America for the fourth quarter had increased 35% compared with the fourth quarter of last year and that these sales benefited from the launch of the generic version of Yasmin.

So it seems like it’s a pretty simple equation for these pharmaceutical companies: little pill = big profit.

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