What Happened In The MassTorts World Last Week? 2020-Jan-20
Endo Reaches Out Of Court Opioid Settlement
On Friday, Oklahoma Attorney General said that he made an out-of-court settlement of $8.75 million with Endo Pharmaceuticals over the opioids crisis.
The settlement amount will be added to a fund set up from the previously obtained $85 million settlement with Teva Pharmaceuticals last year. Also, Endo will neither employ sales representatives to promote opioids in the state, nor support information promoting opioids as a part of the settlement. The Attorney General said that money from this settlement, as well as the money from other settlements, will be used to abate Oklahoma’s opioid epidemic. According to estimation, as many as 100,000 Oklahomans are struggling with opioid addiction, and every 25 minutes, a baby is born suffering from opioid withdrawal as per the attorney general.
Purdue Pharma also made a $270 million settlement last year with the state, following which the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
Meanwhile, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) has announced the allocation of $17.5 million from the State Opioid Response (SOR) Grant over the opioid epidemic. The amount will be used for support services for individuals at the highest risk of overdose, including offering medications to treat opioid use disorder, as well as naloxone within the criminal justice system and in the emergency department following an overdose.
Okla. AG Files Lawsuit Against 3 Opioid Distributors
On Monday, Oklahoma Attorney General announced a new lawsuit filed against three distributors of opioids. The three pharmaceutical distributors include McKesson Corp., Cardinal Health Inc., and AmerisourceBergen Drug Corp.
The attorney general in the lawsuit filed in Cleveland County District Court stated that the three defendants fueled the opioid crisis by distributing large and unreasonable quantities of opioids to communities throughout the United States, including Oklahoma. According to the AG's office, in 2017, there were 479 prescriptions for opioids per hour, which is enough for each adult in the state to have 156 pills.
The lawsuit also alleged negligence and wrongful enrichment, seeking an unspecified amount of compensatory and punitive damages.
The lawsuit followed after the AG's office seized more than $363 million in settlements with other companies over the opioid crisis. Last week, on Friday, Endo Pharmaceuticals reached an out of court settlement with the state and agreed to pay $8.75 million. Purdue Pharma and Teva Pharmaceuticals also made a settlement of $270 million and $85 million, respectively, last year.
Earlier, New York's attorney general Letitia James announced a deal stating more companies will be able to make an easy-to-use version of opioid overdose antidote.
The agreement by the attorney general’s office states that Adapt Pharma, which was acquired by Rockville, Maryland-based Emergent BioSolutions in 2018, had the sole rights to sell the drug nalmefene using Aptar Pharma's nasal spray technology. Following the agreement, Emergent will no longer hold a contract that allowed it to be the only company to develop a nasal spray using nalmefene, which is still in the making and not in the market.
The agreement will not affect already in use Narcan, a spray version of the drug naloxone now sold by Emergent, as the agreement is not subject to spray technology. Narcan is popular among police, firefighters, and others who use it on people affected by overdose.
The easy-to-use version antidote would still require Food and Drug Administration approval before the product goes into the market.
Opioids are on the market for ages and have been used basically for pain relief for post-surgical pain, cancer-related pain, chronic or persistent pain. Opioids when used in proper dosage and along with a combination of other pain treatments, work in relieving pain successfully, unless there is a misuse or abuse of the drug.
Companies manufacturing opioids convinced the medical community that these medications were not addictive and were purely beneficial. This belief raised the number of prescriptions and sales unwarrantedly, resulting in a mass misuse of these drugs, to the extent that this was identified by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a public issue and named it an opioid crisis
Jan. 27, St. Louis Roundup Trial Postponed
A Roundup trial that was scheduled to begin on January 27 in St. Louis County Circuit has been postponed.
The postponed lawsuit involving a plaintiff who alleged the controversial weedkiller for his non-Hodgkin's lymphoma was originally scheduled to begin in August 2019. The case was closely monitored, as the former chairman and CEO of Monsanto, Hugh Grant, was expected to provide testimony.
The lawsuit was expected to gauge how other St. Louis juries would respond to evidence and testimony that is likely to be repeated throughout more than 40,000 other similar claims.
However, Bayer could not avoid another similar trial that is still expected to begin on January 21 in St. Louis City Circuit Court.
Roundup lawsuits are consolidated under federal multidistrict litigation (MDL No. 2741; In Re: Roundup Products Liability Litigation) in the Northern District of California, presided by U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria.
Essure Devices Discontinued As Per FDA's Guidelines
The Food & Drug Administration of the U.S. indicated that all the Essure devices are removed from the market, and the women who had permanently implanted the device are enrolled in a study to evaluate the risk associated with it.
99% of the devices were successfully retrieved from the market by Bayer, and only 10 units are remaining. Besides retrieving the devices, Bayer will study 340 women who implanted the device and compare the results to 788 women who were about to undergo laparoscopic tubal ligation.
The Essure device is used for birth control, but thousands of women suffered complications, including migration injuries, perforation, severe reactions, and other problems, which resulted in the removal of the devices from the market.
Essure is suspended from the market in most of the countries since 2017, but Bayer continued to sell the device in the U.S. until the end of 2018. In July 2018, Bayer announced to remove all the Essure devices from the U.S. market from December 2018.
Bayer is currently facing 18,000 lawsuits nationwide. Worldwide 750,000 women have been implanted with the device, of which 70% are from the U.S. as estimated by Bayer.
FDA To Conduct Talc-Asbestos Test Methods Meeting
FDA will hold a meeting next month to discuss testing methods for the baby powder, following a nationwide recall after federal regulators found segments of asbestos particles in Johnson & Johnson's (J&J) talcum powder .
The public meeting is scheduled for February 4, where the FDA will hear testimony about the best possible methods to test asbestos in talc, and talc-containing cosmetic products, from the experts. The meeting will also include discussion and presentation of scientific data, information on the testing methodologies, and terminology and criteria. According to the agency, even after using the most sensitive electron microscopy methods, laboratories may get different results, which leads to a lack of uniformity for testing.
The recall that happened last year was the result of a survey conducted by the FDA for 50 talc-containing cosmetic products. The recall impacted around 33,000 bottles sold in stores nationwide.
Bayer's Roundup Lawsuit Settlements Are Nearing
Mediator Ken Feinberg, appointed by the court last May for court-mandated settlement talks over allegations that Bayer AG’s glyphosate-based Roundup weed killer caused cancer, said in an interview on Thursday that he is positive about the settlement that will be made by Bayer over its Roundup weed killer.
Earlier, in its third-quarter report, Bayer disclosed that it was facing 42,700 claims, but as per the recent study, Mediator Ken Feinberg informed that the claims might have grown between 75,000 and 85,000 or maybe more, which will be followed by a fair settlement to be disclosed within the next month.
In December, Bayer agreed to postpone some Roundup trials as it lost three trials in California, resulting in combined damages of $191 million. Bayer is appealing the verdicts it lost and has put the upcoming trials on hold.
Bayer will face the two trials in Martinez, California, a suburb of San Francisco, and St. Louis, which will start today.
Currently, there are approximately 18,000 Roundup lawsuits across the United States. All the lawsuits are centralised before U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria in the Northern District of California under federal multi-district litigation (MDL No. 2741; In Re: Roundup Products Liability Litigation).
Court Grants Summary Judgment To GE In Asbestos Case
Last week, a Connecticut federal court granted summary judgment to General Electric over an asbestos case, stating there was no material fact that the company’s products were the reason for the plaintiff’s injury.
A couple filed a lawsuit against General Electric and multiple other defendants stating that the man was exposed to asbestos while working as a radiological control technician for General Dynamics/Electric Boat Corp. from 1973-1974. The plaintiffs are seeking for loss of consortium and common-law product liability.
According to the court, a plaintiff must show that he was exposed to the defendant’s product, the product was a substantial contributing factor in causing the injury he suffered, and that the defendant manufactured or distributed the injurious product. During interrogation, the plaintiffs did not list GE as an employer nor mentioned any products of GE that he was exposed to.
As the plaintiff did not provide anything which showed his exposure to a GE product, the court granted summary judgment in favor of GE.
Earlier in December 2019, J&J argued that its talcum powder did not contain asbestos for which the company even provided the required evidence from the agency and institutional studies that outline the company's testing protocol, including more than 170,000 test samples of talc which claimed it as asbestos-free.
Currently, 14,000 Talcum Powder and Shower-to-Shower lawsuits are centralised before the jury under multi-district litigation MDL No. 2738; In Re: Johnson & Johnson Talcum Powder Products Marketing, Sales Practices, and Products Liability Litigation. The lawsuits are even pending in California, proceeding under Judicial Council Coordinated Proceeding No. 4877.