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

Since Judge Herndon appointed the Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee for the Yaz and Yasmin Multi-District Litigation (MDL) the main focus has been case organization, specifically what procedures are needed for efficient case management.

To keep this matter from getting too cluttered and costly, Judge Herndon and those of us on the Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee and defense counsel have focused on the case management and organizational issues early on, which we hope will make everything run more smoothly down the road in the litigation. At the December status conference, we discussed details such as the protocol for protecting confidential information in the case, how new complaints filed on behalf of injured women and their families will be organized, and what additional procedures may be required since Bayer is a foreign company. At the close of the conference we were also introduced to Ms. Debra Ward, the Judge’s new law clerk specifically assigned to the Yaz and Yasmin MDL proceeding. Ms. Ward will be assisting Judge Herndon in organizing the case going forward.

In summary, the Court is primarily in organizational mode at this time. As Judge Herndon said during the December status conference, “the Court would like this case to move along efficiently and effectively. Both sides are working diligent[ly] and in good faith to move this litigation at a fast pace and court is encouraged by that. [The] Court has had to intervene very little.”

The next status conference in the case is March 4, 2010.

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We speak with women on a daily basis who want to know more about what’s going on with the Yaz and Yasmin lawsuits. Many have heard that it’s a type of lawsuit known as a "mass tort." Naturally, the next question we hear is “so what is a mass tort?”

A mass tort typically involves multiple personal injury cases where the victims are injured in a similar way by a specific product, drug, or event. Because all of the victims’ claims typically share common legal or factual questions, the courts recognize that sometimes it makes more sense for the common questions for all the lawsuits to be resolved by a single judge in one court. Once the common questions are resolved, the individual cases are sent back to the individual courts for trial.

I took a look online for more information about Mass Tort cases and found some interesting info. A blog dedicated entirely to Mass Tort Litigation is talking about the Yaz and Yasmin lawsuits. A few months ago, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch, who is one of the authors of the blog and an Assistant Professor of Law at Florida State University College of Law, wrote that the Yaz and Yasmin lawsuits might be centralized. This is because lawsuits that involve hundreds of victims can become really complicated and disorganized when they proceed on an individual basis (imagine hundreds of cases brought against the same companies in all different courts spread throughout the whole country); centralizing these cases helps to prevent this. Just as Ms. Burch predicted, the federal lawsuits against Yaz and Yasmin were centralized and are now part of a Multi-District Litigation.

So here's the basic breakdown: if a large number of people suffer similar injuries after using a common product, then frequently those individuals’ legal claims many be coordinated into a mass tort lawsuit, which is usually centralized in one court with one judge in order to resolve any common questions.

Hope that helps sort out some of the confusion, but feel free to ask or comment if there are any other questions.

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We appeared before Judge Herndon in East Saint Louis last week for the first hearing in the Yaz and Yasmin cases.  This was the Judge's opportunity to meet some of the Yaz lawyers who have not appeared in his court before and to make sure that the cases are moving forward to resolution as quickly and smoothly as is possible given the circumstances.

Before the hearing, Bayer agreed to turn over many of its documents pertaining to the drugs' development and testing.  Bayer has told us to expect to receive about a million pages of documents within the next few weeks, and another 30 million pages or more in the months to come.

We expect to begin organizing and analyzing the documents almost immediately upon receiving them.  We anticipate that many of the documents will concern drospirenone, the key ingredient in Yaz, Yasmin and Ocella.  We will be searching the documents for evidence of what Bayer knew about the dangers of drospirenone and when.

Next hearing before Judge Herndon: December 17. 

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Yaz lawsuit news! Ms. A.J. De Bartolomeo, one of the authors of this blog and a partner at Girard Gibbs LLP, was appointed today to the Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee in the Yasmin/Yaz MultiDistrict Litigation (MDL). As one of only two female attorneys to be appointed to the Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee, we know she’ll do a great job representing women across the country.

Also, a little FYI for those of you out there who may not know what a “Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee” is: a Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee, or PSC (lawyers love acronyms), is typically formed in a complex MDL case where many similar cases are consolidated into one court to be heard before one judge. Because there are so many individual Yaz cases, in order to keep the courtroom from getting packed full with dozens of lawyers, the court selects a small committee of Yaz attorneys to direct the litigation as it moves forward. The judge handling the Yaz cases has selected A.J. as one of the attorneys to serve on that small committee and to make sure that the interests of the Yaz victims are properly protected.

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As reported by Kate Moser of the Recorder, over the past few months, women from all across the country have brought lawsuits against the makers of Yaz, Yasmin or Ocella for side effects and health conditions they suffered after taking those birth control pills.

Recently, these lawsuits were coordinated and combined into a special kind of case known as an MDL (MDL is an abbreviation for MultiDistrict Litigation).

The purpose of an MDL is to transfer all pending federal cases throughout the country that deal with a similar issue to one judge. The idea is that having one judge hear all similar cases is more efficient and allows the cases to move along quickly to avoid wasting money and resources. The decision whether cases should be transferred and combined into an MDL is made by a panel of seven federal judges known as the United States Judicial Panel on MultiDistrict Litigation (JPML). The Panel has a brochure describing its role.

The two main jobs of the Panel are:

1. To determine whether similar cases that have been filed in different courts involve enough common factual questions so that the panel can transfer these cases into one court; and
2. To select the specific court and judge to be assigned to manage those cases.

The Panel has recently transferred the Yaz and Yasmin cases into one MDL called In re: Yasmin and Yaz (Drospirenone) Marketing, Sales Practices and Products Liability Litigation (master docket number 09-2100). Judge David R. Herndon of the United States District Court of the Southern District of Illinois has been assigned to oversee this MDL.

Because of this coordination, any person who filed a federal lawsuit against Yaz or Yasmin, is likely to have her case brought within the umbrella of this MDL along with dozens, if not hundreds, of other similar cases.

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