The lawsuit was filed against a number of corporations that are part of Bayer Corporation and Johnson & Johnson, the marketers and manufacturers of Xarelto, a blood thinner, on behalf of the family of a man who died in 2013 after a bleeding event allegedly caused by Xarelto.

Xarelto was approved by the FDA for sale in the U.S. in 2011. It is the second in a new class of anticoagulants to be approved, after Pradaxa, which was approved in 2010. The new drugs are marketed as an improvement over warfarin or Coumadin, which is often used in stroke prevention, but may disrupt vitamin K levels and requires frequent blood testing.

In late 2014, litigants sought to establish a multidistrict litigation (MDL) for Xarelto cases. Most plaintiffs requested that the MDL be established under Judge Herndon in East St. Louis, Illinois, but the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation chose U.S. District Court Judge Eldon Fallon in New Orleans to oversee the MDL.

The Xarelto litigation focuses on the alleged insufficiency of warning labels, including the alleged failure to warn prescribing physicians and patients that some patients are at higher risk for a bleeding event.

Paul Greenberg is a Chicago work accidents and wrongful death lawyer with Briskman Briskman & Greenberg. To learn more call 1.877.595.4878 or visit http://www.briskmanandbriskman.com/.

These lawsuits are part of multidistrict litigation in U.S. District Court, Southern District of Illinois. On November 4, the court established a protocol for selecting bellwether cases, directing both sides to select up to three lawsuits as possible candidates. In January 2014, the court will select four of those cases for the first bellwether trials, which are scheduled to commence in August 2014.

According to court records, at least 1,767 lawsuits are pending in the litigation. The complaints allege that Boehringer Ingelheim failed to adequately warn doctors and patients about internal bleeding as a side effect of Pradaxa and about the lack of an available antidote.

The Food and Drug Administration recorded more than 582 deaths and 3,292 reports of other adverse events involving Pradaxa in 2012, according to the Institute for Safe Medicine Practices. The figure exceeds the adverse reports of any other drug tracked in 2012.

According to news reports, regulators in several countries have issued warnings regarding the side effects of the drug, especially concerning internal bleeding.

Pradaxa has been sold as an alternative to warfarin, an established blood-thinning medication. Blood-thinning medications are prescribed to prevent strokes caused by blood clots. Some research has found Pradaxa to be more effective than warfarin at preventing such strokes. However, internal hemorrhaging caused by warfarin can be treated with vitamin K; there is no such effective treatment for stopping internal bleeding caused by Pradaxa.

U.S. District Judge David Herndon recently ruled that Boehringer Ingelheim must pay a fine of almost $1,000,000 for withholding or failing to preserve “countless” files sought by the plaintiffs. Judge Herndon said that the company acted in bad faith and that its efforts to safeguard the documents were grossly inadequate.

The documents in question concerned the drug maker’s development and marketing of Pradaxa. Judge Herndon said that the failure to preserve them was “egregious.”

Boehringer Ingelheim said that there were unintentional and unexpected discovery problems in the litigation, and that the plaintiffs were not prevented from obtaining access to the central documents in the case.

A key allegation in the lawsuits is that Boehringer executives were aware of the risk of death from internal bleeding when they brought the drug to market in 2010. Pradaxa has generated sales of more than $1,000,000,000 for the German, family-owned firm.

Bob Briskman is a injury lawyer and attorney in Chicago with Briskman Briskman & Greenberg. To learn more call 1.877.595.4878 or visit http://www.briskmanandbriskman.com/.