A new Yaz gallbladder lawsuit has been filed in District Court of Minnesota. The suit includes five plaintiffs, all of whom are claiming that they developed either gallbladder disease and/or blood clots after taking the controversial birth control pill made by Bayer.
The plaintiffs included in this lawsuit are alleging that they were not properly warned of the side effects linked to Yaz before they took the drug. They say that Bayer did not warn doctors or consumers of the dangers linked to Yaz despite various reports of the side effects that occurred in both Europe and the United States. In fact, the lawsuit accuses Bayer of continuing to downplay the side effects in its now-removed ad campaign that promoted the pills’ off-label uses including using the drug to cure acne and PMDD. At the time that the ad was being used, there was no supporting clinical data to prove that those statements were true.
This new lawsuit was filed on April 24 and includes four adult plaintiffs and one minor. Of the new plaintiffs, four of them — Chastity Aasheim, Latasha Fields, the minor plaintiff and Tara Henderson — developed gallbladder disease. Henderson also became pregnant while taking Yaz and believes her child’s epilepsy may have been caused by Yaz. One plaintiff, Amy Tousignant, developed a pulmonary embolism after taking Yaz for two years.
Yaz and Yasmin have been proven to cause serious adverse side effects which include gallbladder disease, heart attacks, strokes and blood clots that can lead to pulmonary embolisms and deep vein thrombosis. While Bayer maintained for a long time that their pills, which contain drospirenone, are no more dangerous than pills that don’t contain drospirenone, the company has now begun to reach settlement agreements. One such settlement agreement has Bayer paying out $110 million to 500 plaintiffs, which amounts to each plaintiff receiving about $220,000. When viewing the total agreement amount, the sum seems like a lot, but when you look at the total per plaintiff, Bayer likely got off easy in those cases.
