With Bayer’s recent decision to set aside $24 million to cover Yaz gallbladder lawsuits, it has many people wondering if the company is using these settlements just to save billions later in lawsuit payouts.
As thousands of women and their families continue to file lawsuits against Bayer over the numerous side effects linked to the company’s controversial oral contraceptives Yaz, Yasmin and the generic version Ocella, it appears as though Bayer has finally begun to cede. However, with Bayer’s secession, a full admission to liability does not follow. Even as the company had originally set aside $1 billion to cover Yaz lawsuits, the sheer number of claims against them was sure to be triple that before the company started negotiating settlements. And the new settlement agreements in the gallbladder claims show that Bayer is only offering $2,000 to patients with gallbladder disease and $3,000 to those who have to have their gallbladders removed due to their uses of Yaz, Yasmin and Ocella.
Other side effects have also been linked to Yaz use. Some of those side effects include heart attacks, kidney stones and blood clots that cause deep vein thrombosis, pulmonary embolisms and strokes. Bayer has also been negotiating settlements over the blood clot side effects, which provides users with far more compensation ($200,000 per plaintiff). Somehow it appears that Bayer continues to negotiate its way out of giving plaintiffs huge payouts while not having to admit to liability for users’ Yaz injuries. Of course, agreeing to the payouts at least proves that Bayer doesn’t expect to win the failure-to-warn cases filed against it. That alone shows that the drug giant doesn’t get to completely walk away from the lawsuits guilt-free, even if the payouts are getting smaller per plaintiff. While it isn’t much, it is better than nothing at all.
