Bayer is Not The Victim of Yaz Lawsuits
Whenever there is a high profile legal action against a manufacturer or corporation, there is almost always an outcry from some in the public who think that the biggest victim is the manufacturer or corporation.
Even if the legal action in question involves a major consumer catastrophe where hundreds of people get injured or worse, die, some people manage to portray the perpetrators as the victims. They moan about the “expense of the legal procedures,” or they complain that the courts are being clogged up with “unnecessary” or “frivolous” cases. They may also claim that lawsuits “force” businesses to raise their prices, which will impact all the consumers, and not just the ones who were injured.
We have a particularly hard time buying these arguments, especially when they come from multibillion dollar earning pharmaceutical companies. In the first place, the only thing that can “force” a pharmaceutical company to do anything is either the pharmaceutical company itself or the law. Nothing “forces” a pharmaceutical company to charge fifteen dollars for a pill that costs eight cents to manufacture. Nothing “forces” a pharmaceutical company to put out products that are dangerous to the public. Nobody “forces” pharmaceutical companies to “grind out” any and all legal proceedings when a simple admission of wrongdoing and a reasonable offer of compensation to the victims would be more than sufficient.
But the narrative is quite often sympathetic to the poor, beleaguered pharmaceutical companies who are being attacked by opportunistic and ungrateful patients and lawyers, demanding unreasonable rewards for medical problems that were “dubious” at best.
Before you start feeling sorry for the pharmaceutical companies, consider the case of Susan Galinas. Mrs. Galinas is a mother of two who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. She had been experiencing severe menstrual pain, and under her doctor’s advice, she started taking a birth control pill called Yaz.
Yaz is one of the Bayer Corporation’s line of birth control pills. Along with Yasmin and its generic version Ocella, Yaz contains a variation of progestin called drospirenone. These three birth control pills are the only ones on the market that contain this ingredient.
Exactly one month and one day after Mrs. Galinas started taking Yaz, she was rushed to the hospital due to a severe stroke. The stroke was so severe that surgeons had to remove part of her skull. Mrs. Galinas suffered severe brain damage, so much so that she has no short term memory capabilities, and her IQ is now just barely above the level of a person who is mentally disabled.
Mrs. Galinas’ stroke and her use of Yaz are not necessarily mutually exclusive events. They are most likely directly related. While most of the birth control pills on the market carry some element of risk, the use of drospirenone elevates these risks to a remarkable degree. The use of drospirenone elevates the chances of deep vein thrombosismore than any other birth control pill available. DVT causes clots in the bloodstream, which can break up and travel. These pieces of clot can cause blockages in the veins, which can cause heart attacks and, in the case of Mrs. Galinas, a stroke.
The Food and Drug Administration has unfortunately been very slow about taking any action regarding Yaz and Yasmin. The only positive steps the FDA has taken involved forcing Bayer to change an advertising campaign, and while that might have opened a few eyes about the dangers of these products, these pills are still readily available. And women who are prescribed these pills are still being hospitalized with pulmonary embolisms, strokes, heart attacks or gall bladder disease.
As you can tell from the footage, Mrs. Galinas’ life was changed for the worse. She was disfigured, she suffered brain damage, and she will have to spend the rest of her life as a shadow of herself. She will be unable to be the mother to her children that she once was, she will be unable to drive, and she will be unable to return to any meaningful employment. Besides her medical issues, her financial outlook is bleak, to say the least.
Bayer, on the other hand, is doing great financially. In the third quarter of 2008, Bayer made $445 million. (A financial quarter, by the way, is three months.) In the third quarter of 2009, Bayer made $462 million. In the first nine months of 2008, Bayer made $1.3 billion. In the first nine months of 2009, Bayer made $1.4 billion. And Yasmin is their top selling product.
This is hardly a beleaguered company being taken advantage of by greedy lawyers. Bayer is an enormous pharmaceutical giant earning billions. It is difficult for us to understand why Bayer is failing to admit any culpability here, or at least failing to come clean and offer decent settlements to the victims of Yaz, Yasmin, and Oscella users who have experienced real medical problems from these dangerous birth control pills.
Greenberg and Bederman is a Washington, D.C. injury law firm that has been in practice since 1985. It is our job to help those who have been seriously injured due to no fault of their own, and that includes women who have taken dangerous drugs. Yaz, Yasmin and Ocella certainly fall under that category. If you or a loved one has been hospitalized or injured due to the use of Yaz, Yasmin or Ocella, contact Greenberg & Bederman and ask to speak to our yaz lawyer, Andy Bederman, for a free yaz legal consultation. To watch our yaz video on youtube please click on yaz lawyer video.
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