Bayer's Lawyers Ask Yaz Victims for Personal Information
Have you ever been questioned on the witness stand or in a deposition? It isn’t fun.
The main job of the opposing counsel is to make the jury doubt the validity of your testimony. This means they will do everything short of calling you a liar. They will pick apart your story, obsess over irrelevant details of your testimony and call your motives into question.
If that doesn’t work, the opposing counsel often has no problems with getting personal. They will often ask you questions about your life that has absolutely nothing to do with the case at hand. The reason they do this is because they want to make you appear untrustworthy to the judge or jury.
Fortunately, for thousands of women across the country, the judge presiding over the Yaz birth control pill case will be placing limits on these sorts of questions.
For those of you who don’t know, there have been hundreds of lawsuits filed against Bayer over their line of birth control pills. These pills, which are marketed under the names of Yaz, Yasmin and Oscella, contain drospirenone, which is a synthetic variation of the hormone progestin. This variation has been shown to increase the level of potassium in the bloodstream of the women who use these birth control pills. This can cause deep vein thrombosis, which is the formation of blood clots in the veins and arteries of the legs. Quite often, theses clots break apart, and the remnants travel through the bloodstream, causing blockages in the lungs, heart or brain.
Due to the large number of lawsuits that were all filed under similar circumstances (users of these pills being hospitalized due to pulmonary embolisms, strokes or heart attacks,) the suits were consolidated into multi-district litigation. This means that the general ground rules of the cases will be the same, and that certain pieces of evidence will be considered as a given rather than having to be presented over and over again.
On Friday the eleventh, a hearing was held in the Philadelphia Common Pleas Court to determine these general ground rules for a yaz lawsuit. Bayer’s lawyers were seeking permission to force the plaintiffs in these Yaz, Yasmin and Oscella cases to fill out a questionnaire that would make them detail any methods of birth control that they have used besides hormonal birth control.
From here it is a very slippery slope to asking plaintiffs about how many sexual partners they have had, or how long they have been using birth control, or any manner of sleazy questions that would serve to do nothing but make the plaintiffs in this case appear to have somehow deserved what happened to them. This is the same sort of deflective questioning that many defense lawyers still use when questioning rape victims.
Judge Sandra Mazer Moss viewed the idea of the questionnaire as both inappropriate and a potential invasion of privacy:
During the hearing, Judge Sandra Mazer Moss, coordinating judge of Philadelphia's mass torts program, said she was surprised the defendants weren't asking how many partners the female plaintiffs had.
"Then we could put out a brochure and everyone will know," Moss said.
Judge Moss did mention that she might allow the defendants to obtain some information about prior contraceptive use among the plaintiffs, but she made it clear that she would not allow the proceedings to degenerate into an interrogation about the sex lives of the victims.
We also are having a hard time discerning what the motives would be for asking about past birth control use in forms that don’t involve hormonal replacement. The question at hand is whether the hormone in Yaz, Yasmin and Oscella has been causing blood clots. Condoms, IUD’s and cervical caps involve no hormones whatsoever. We can only intimate that the reason to bring this up is to publically embarrass the plaintiffs. This tactic is actually more than just being spiteful. If a woman finds out that she will have to disclose information that is very personal, it might be enough to get her to drop the case. If that seems like a cold hearted tactic, do bear in mind that there is quite a lot at stake with these cases. This isn’t just one woman who had a bad experience with these pills. This involves hundreds of women all over the country who have experienced severe medical problems, and sadly, there have even been deaths. Bayer will be sure to do anything within their power to whittle down the number of lawsuits that they will be facing, and that includes intimidation through public humiliation. With that in mind, we are pleased that Judge Moss did not allow this irrelevant and insulting questionnaire to be pursued.
Greenberg and Bederman is currently accepting cases involving women in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. who have been injured or hospitalized due to the use of these birth control pills. If you or a loved one has suffered from a stroke, heart attack, pulmonary embolism or gallbladder disease due to the use of Yaz, Yasmin or Oscella, do not hesitate to contact our yaz lawyer, Andy Bederman, for a free yaz legal consultation.
To watch our yaz video on you tube, please click yaz lawyer video.
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