Yaz has long been the focal point of thousands of drug injury lawsuits due to the drug’s link to life-threatening side effects. In fact, the drospirenone-based pills are so dangerous that they have forced patients to file so many lawsuits against Bayer, the makers of Yaz, that it is now topping the list of currently pending MDLs in the United States.
To put this number in perspective, Yaz lawsuits now number higher than even asbestos cases, which have been growing since the 1970s. As a way to try to speed up the discovery process in the Yaz lawsuits, a multidistrict litigation has been formed in Illinois. Judge David R. Herndon is the presiding judge in the MDL in Illinois, which includes at least 1,400 pending lawsuits. According to a July 2012 MDL Statistics Report (PDF) that has been released by the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation, Yaz MDLs currently include 8,825 pending cases, and this number keeps on growing as more and more plaintiffs file lawsuits against Bayer.
All of the pending Yaz lawsuits are similar in that they claim that Bayer failed to properly warn the public and healthcare professionals of the side effects linked to Yaz, which include gallbladder disease, heart attacks, strokes and blood clots that can lead to deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolisms. Most recently, kidney stones and irritable bowel syndrome have been linked to Yaz. With any luck, Yaz will also be banned from the market like asbestos was, and future patients can avoid Yaz side effects altogether.
