Bayer’s Yaz lawyers are facing some confusion over whether the company’s generic version of Yaz is exempt from lawsuits. Ocella, the generic version of Yasmin, might be exempt from lawsuits thanks to the Supreme Court’s blanket ruling involving the liability of generic drug makers. Ocella is also just as controversial as the brand name versions of Yaz and Yasmin. Side effects from both birth control pills have been the subject of thousands of lawsuits.
Generic drug companies manufacture drugs of all types, but what makes Ocella different is that is manufactured by Bayer, the same makers of the brand name version. Because of this, Yaz lawyers don’t like the fact that, according to this recent ruling, Bayer is responsible for side effects from the generic version and name brand version, and they want to contest it. They are also just as liable for all of the label inconsistencies that are supposed to warn the public about the pills.
All of this hullaballoo is because of a ruling the Supreme Court made in June of this year. The court ruled on the case Pliva Inc. v. Mensing in a 5-4 judgment that said that generic drug companies aren’t liable for warning label inconsistencies that don’t report on the side effects properly because federal law stipulates that the generic drugs’ labels have to be identical to the labels of the brand name versions.
As to how Bayer lawyers think that this isn’t fair is anyone’s guess. The fact is, if the brand name versions of Yaz and Yasmin had listed the warnings properly in the first place, there wouldn’t be as many lawsuits against them today. If Bayer can manufacture dangerous pills and market them (even in their off-label uses) , the company should be held accountable for the suffering of patients taking those drugs. The drug giant should have known that creating a generic version just to make more money off of the drug was going to come back to haunt the company sooner or later. It just wanted to hold on to the drugs’ revenue — and in doing so, the company opened itself up to more lawsuits.