As Levaquin lawsuits start piling up, a federal judge is trying to get plaintiffs and defendants to work out some sort of settlement agreement before the cases go to trial. This move makes sense since there are thousands of Levaquin lawsuits waiting to see the inside of a courtroom.
After a previous meeting between U.S. Chief Magistrate Judge Arthur Boylan, held February 2, a follow-up settlement conference was scheduled for April 4. For this conference, the lawyers in attendance will be told to show up “armed with full settlement discretion.” The federal Levaquin litigation mentioned here was consolidated as part of an MDL because of the sheer volume of cases (that are currently pending) for pretrial proceedings in Minnesota. The first round of trials was meant to assist in getting both sides of the litigations to make the arguments that are expected to get told repeatedly throughout all of the cases. Before the next settlement conference takes place, both sides of the litigation have been ordered to provide a letter to Judge Boylan that expresses their position in the settlement.
Levaquin is a controversial, yet popular antibiotic that earned a black box warning from the FDA in 2008 after it was discovered to cause tendon ruptures. These tendon rupture risks are why so many Levaquin users have filed lawsuits against the makers of the drug, Johnson & Johnson. At least one of those lawsuits resulted in an award of $1.8 million for plaintiff John Schedin. In his lawsuit, Schedin claimed that J&J did not properly warn him of the increased risks of tendon ruptures linked to Levaquin.
