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More Ortho Evra® News
Johnson & Johnson's latest SEC filing stated that the company is facing 500 lawsuits related to injuries and death caused by Ortho Evra®. The company filing does not report any of the settlements that have been in the press lately.
Analysts say the 500 Ortho Evra® patch lawsuits are just the tip of the iceberg, because there are many more young women who have suffered blood clots, strokes, and heart attacks due to Ortho Evra®.
Ortho Evra® lawyers handling these cases say they are winnable because there are no pre-existing conditions with younger women and the kind of injuries are unheard of in teenagers and younger women.
Johnson & Johnson has adopted a strategy to settle as many Ortho Evra® lawsuits as quickly and quietly as possible. In fact, many of the lawsuits have already ended in confidential settlements with barely any news coverage.
The New York Post was one of the only newspapers to cover the story about Ortho Evra® injury settlements. "Ortho-McNeil has settled a dozen lawsuits for millions of dollars in the last few months, and more than 100 other suits are pending," said the Post.
In attempt to manage the large number of Ortho Evra® birth control patch lawsuits, the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation issued a transfer order to consolidate the pre-trial proceedings of 13 federal lawsuits filed by plaintiffs in different states, along with 54 related actions pending.
That move seemed to push Johnson & Johnson toward settling even more Ortho Evra® cases out-of-court. According to legal experts, Johnson & Johnson quietly settles all these cases out-of-court so the time limits for filing a lawsuit are going away for many people who may have no idea that Ortho Evra® is the cause of an injury or death.
In May of 2006, the LA Times reported that Johnson & Johnson entered into settlement agreements with about 30 women injured by Ortho Evra®, quoting a plaintiff's attorney, who negotiated the agreements in cases filed in three state courts and two federal courts.
The Associated Press (AP) also reviewed what had happened since Ortho Evra® arrived on the market in 2002, and determined that deaths of women on the patch appeared to be at least 3 times higher than women on the pill.
Under a FOIA request by the AP, the FDA released approximately 16,000 adverse event reports associated with the Ortho Evra® patch ranging from a mild rash to death. The AP also found 23 different deaths associated with Ortho Evra®, 17 of which where clot related.
In July 2005, CNN reported on a lawsuit filed in New Jersey, on behalf of 10 women, who said the Ortho Evra® birth control patch caused them to suffer blood clots and strokes.
The plaintiffs had all suffered debilitating long-term health problems as a result of using the Ortho Evra®. Amanda Bianchi, 19, developed a 10-inch blood clot in her brain and suffered two strokes, which doctors said was a direct result of Ortho Evra® that she used for 3 months in 2004.
More news of Johnson & Johnson's intentional suppression of the facts related to the dangers of Ortho Evra® hit the airwaves in November 2005, when CBS News ran a story that the company's own records revealed during litigation showed that between April 2002 and December 2004, the company had received some 500 reports of serious problems associated with the Ortho Evra® patch.
In addition, CBS reported that there were four times as many strokes in women using the Ortho Evra® birth control patch even though there were three times as many women taking the pill. CBS also said the evidence indicated that the risk of blood clots was 14 times higher with women using Ortho Evra®.
The AP dropped another bomb in November 2005, by reporting that Johnson & Johnson knew about the higher death and injury rates of women on Ortho Evra® all the long and had refused to conduct additional testing as they were afraid of the results.
Ortho Evra® critics say it's not that difficult to figure out why Johnson & Johnson was in a rush to start settling cases in January 2006. And since January 2006, the steady filing of Ortho Evra® lawsuits has continued unabated, with each new case usually accompanied by a press release.
Ortho Evra® patch lawsuits are also being filed in other countries. On July 28, 2006, a class action was filed in Canada alleging that the drug makers failed to adequately warn that Ortho Evra® was associated with an increased risk of developing blood clots, strokes, deep vein thrombosis, and heart attacks.
Hopefully the media has come out of hibernation and all of the women who have been injured by Ortho Evra® will at least know what happened.
Reference:
"500 Ortho-Evra Birth Control Patch Victims Sue," Scoop Independent News, Evelyn Pringle, September 2006.
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