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Defense Wins 3rd Xarelto Mass Tort Bellwether in a Row

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jury in federal court in Missouri returned the third verdict in favor of Janssen Pharmaceuticals and Bayer in a bellwether trial over the blood-thinner Xarelto. The companies are facing 18,000 similar lawsuits charging that the drug causes uncontrollable bleeding.

Juries in the multidistrict litigation docket, MDL 2592 before U.S. District Judge Eldon E. Fallon in the Eastern District of Lousiana, also returned defense verdicts on May 3 and June 12 this year.

The plaintiff Dora Mingo of Summit, Mississippi, alleged under Miss. Code Ann. Sec. 11-1-63 that Xarelto was defectively designed because there is no antidote and that it is unreasonably dangerous because of an inadequate warning to physicians about uncontrollable bleeding.

Mingo, a 69-year-old retired schoolteacher, suffered acute gastrointestinal bleeding and severe blood loss after taking Xarelto for a month in 2015 to prevent blood clotting after surgery. Plaintiff attorney Andy Birchfield of Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles of Montgomery, AL, said the companies should have instructed doctors to conduct a simple Prothrombin Time (PT) blood test, to assess a patient's risk of bleeding.

As in the previous trials, the jury returned the verdict after a few hours of deliberation.

Xarelto is Bayer's best-selling drug and in 2016 it generated $3.41 billion in revenues to the German company. Johnson & Johnson, the parent company of Janssen, reported $2.2 billion in revenues from Xarelto.

The FDA approved the drug in 2011 for patients with a heart rhythm disorder known as atrial fibrillation and to treat the risk of deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolisms.

Representing Janssen was Richard Sarver of Barrasso Usdin Kupperman Freeman & Sarver in New Orleans, who was involved in the first Xarelto trial. Bayer was represented by Lyn Pruitt of Mitchell Williams in Little Rock, Arkansas, and Walter T. Johnson at Watkins & Eager in Jackson, Mississippi.

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