Yaz Birth Control Injury Differences

Posted on March 11, 2010 by Greenberg & Bederman

DC Area Yaz Birth Control Injury Law Firm Greenberg and Bederman is Currently Offering Legal Assistance

As many of you probably know, the Bayer Corporation is facing a series of yaz lawsuits in various American states due to problems that users of their line of birth control pills are experiencing. If you don't know about yaz health problems, please read our page on yaz history.The difference between Bayer’s pills and most other oral contraceptives on the market is that Bayer’s birth control pills (which are marketed under the names Yaz, Yasmin, and a generic version called Ocella) all contain a synthetic variation of progestin called drispirenone. While the use of drispirenone has been marketed by Bayer as having some beneficial peripheral effects such as prevention of minor acne or helping to alleviate the symptoms of pre menstrual dysphoric disorder, Bayer failed to mention in either it’s marketing campaign or the warning labels used on the medication that drispirenone raises the risk of deep vein thrombosis, or blood clots in the deep arteries and veins of the legs. These blood clots can then break apart, and the pieces can travel through the bloodstream, which can cause strokes, heart attacks and pulmonary embolisms. The use of drispirenone has also lead to a higher than normal rate of gall bladder disease.

These side effects of yaz are not merely theoretical. There have been hundreds of women who have been seriously injured and hospitalized all over the country due to clot-based injuries. Otherwise perfectly healthy women have suffered from strokes, heart attacks, pulmonary embolisms and gall bladder disease, and there have even been more than fifty deaths.

 

As a result of these injuries and deaths, over 1100 lawsuits have been filed nationwide, with many of them falling under Multi District Litigation, which is a way to place cases with similar backgrounds against the same defendant under the same ground rules. A few class action suits (in which one group of attorneys represents multiple plaintiffs under the heading of one case) have also been filed.

Bayer has, of course, vowed to fight any and all yaz lawsuits regarding their line of birth control pills, and we certainly believe them. With profits of Yaz, Yasmin and Ocella reaching $1.7 billion dollars in 2009, Bayer can afford to wage as many court battles as they see fit. Even with all the justified bad publicity, Yaz is still Bayer’s top selling product.

The Bayer Corporation has already given some clues as to what they expect their defense to be. They recently made an attempt to allow past birth control history of the plaintiff’s to be used as evidence, which was quite rightly denied. And based on public statements by Bayer, we are expecting them to center their defenses on the warning label that is currently in place on the products themselves.

Bayer will probably wear the current label as a shield against any liability, with the premise being “Look, we have a warning label on the box, and the doctors who prescribe it have their warnings as well. If you didn’t read it, we can hardly be expected to be blamed for that.”

There are a few things wrong with that premise. In the first place, the warnings weren’t mentioned very prominently in the enormous and splashy advertising campaign that Bayer used for Yaz. The focus on these ads was all about what Yaz could do for you besides keep you from getting pregnant. In the second place, while the warning on the doctor’s labels does admit that there is a risk of hyperlykemia (elevated potassium levels,) it fails to mention that drispirenone has a higher risk of causing hyperlykemia than any other progestin based oral contraceptive on the market. Since hyperlykemia is a possibility with most other pills, this warning label basically makes it seem as if Yaz, Yasmin and Ocella are no different than any other pill on the market when it comes to risk, and this is simply not true.

An equivalent here would be if a gun manufacturer was selling a pistol that has a higher tendency to fire accidentally than any other gun on the market, but since there is a slight chance that many guns on the market will fire accidentally, their particular gun is no different than the others.

When you study the injuries associated with yaz Bayer’s warning labels should produce a list of conditions that should discourage you from taking any of their drispirenone based pills:

Yaz should not be used in women who have the following:

·         Renal insufficiency

·         Hepatic dysfunction

·         Adrenal Insufficiency

·         Thrombophlebitis or thromboembolic disorders

·         A past history of deep-vein thrombophlebitis or thromboembolic disorders

·         Cerebral-vascular or coronary-artery disease (current or history)

·         Valvular heart disease with thrombogenic complications

·         Severe hypertension

·         Diabetes with vascular involvement

·         Headaches with focal neurological symptoms

·         Major surgery with prolonged immobilization

·         Known or suspected carcinoma of the breast

·         Carcinoma of the endometrium or other known or suspected estrogen-dependent neoplasia

·         Undiagnosed abnormal genital bleeding

·         Cholestatic jaundice of pregnancy or jaundice with prior Pill use

·         Known or suspected pregnancy

·         Liver tumor (benign or malignant) or active liver disease

·         Heavy smoking (≥ 15 cigarettes per day) and over age 35

·         Hypersensitivity to any component of this product

This is all well and good, but that doesn’t explain the hundreds of women who are suffering from none of these symptoms who are still being injured and hospitalized. And aside from that obvious red flag, these symptoms all more or less appear as disqualifications on the warnings for practically every other birth control pill out there. This again makes it appear that Bayer’s line of birth control pills are just the same as every other oral contraceptive, when they are in fact not, and that is one of the major reasons for all of these yaz lawsuits.

The “read the warning label” argument doesn’t carry any water unless that warning label clearly states that drispirenone increases your chances of hyperlykemia, which increase your chances of DVT, which increases your chances of heart attacks, strokes, pulmonary embolisms and gall bladder disease. The increased chances aren’t mentioned in a clear manner at all. Bayer did not say “Here is a birth control pill that can prevent acne and the symptoms of PMDD, but it increases the odds that you will suffer from blood clots. Take it at your own risk.” They simply said “Here is a standard, run of the mill birth control pill, except it can prevent acne and the symptoms of PMDD!”

Greenberg and Bederman is currently offering legal assistance for people in the Washington D.C. area who have been injured due to the use of Yaz, Yasmin or Ocella. Our attorneys are working diligently to help women in Virginia, Maryland and the District who have been hospitalized due to Bayer’s line of birth control pills. If you or a loved one has been injured in this manner, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free yaz legal consultation today.

To learn more about yaz birth control, please read our yaz lawyers website page, or watch our yaz video on Youtube.

 
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Yaz Lawsuits Filed in Indianapolis

Posted on February 16, 2010 by Greenberg & Bederman

Women in Indianapolis Latest to File Yaz Lawsuits

According to the Star Press, over fifty women have filed yaz lawsuits against the Bayer Corporation due to injuries that these women received due to the use of Bayer’s line of birth control pills.

According to the British Medical Journal Study of the women who take Yaz, Yasmin, or Oscella, 6% will experience dangerous adverse reactions ranging from blood clots, to DVT, to Gallbladder injury. Other birth control products have adverse reactions in about 1 % of patients who take birth control pills.

Bear in mind, we certainly don’t think that it’s “normal” for birth control pills to be dangerous to women. But considering that Bayer had no problem with producing, releasing and aggressively marketing a pill with an ingredient that they knew to be more dangerous than other forms of oral contraceptives, we have to assume that they think a five percent casualty rate for their products is “normal.”

The ingredient in question is a synthetic variation of one of the two main ingredients found in almost every birth control pill on the market. Most pills contain a combination of progesterone and estrogen, which essentially fools the female body into thinking that it is already pregnant. In order to separate themselves from the pack, Bayer decided to use a synthetically produced variation of progesterone called drospirenone. With this ingredient firmly in place, Bayer began to trumpet the additional peripheral benefits of what their line of pills could supposedly do. Aside from helping to prevent pregnancy, Bayer claimed that Yaz and Yasmin both helped to prevent serious forms of acne and Pre Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD.) They combined these claims with an expensive and flashy advertising campaign that was aimed at younger women. After all, what young woman wouldn’t want to avoid acne? What young woman wouldn’t wantto avoid the emotional instability that often comes with menstruation?

 

As predicted, Yaz, Yasmin and Ocella became Bayer’s top selling products. And this is exactly why the casualty rate is so high. It turns out that drospirenone does other things besides acne and PMDD prevention. It also dramatically raises the potassium levels in the bloodstreams of the women who use it. This condition (called hyperkalimia) does not lead to positive health benefits. High potassium levels in the bloodstream can and do lead to blood clots in the arteries or veins in the legs, which is called deep vein thrombosis. These clots then break apart and the pieces start to travel through the bloodstream, where they then block the regular flow of blood. This leads to pulmonary embolisms, strokes and heart attacks. This is not to mention gall bladder disease, which has also been linked to Yaz, Yasmin and Ocella.

As of right now, Bayer’s public defense has been presented in two ways. The first is to say that since they have a warning label on the box, and since they mentioned the possible side effects on both the warning labels and the commercials, then it couldn’t possibly be their fault if nobody read it. The second public defense is to release statements that say things like, “When taken properly, Yaz or Yasmin are effective and safe birth control pills,” which implies that it is somehow the fault of the person who was taking the drug rather than the drug manufacturers themselves.

We find a great deal wrong with both of these methods of defense. In the first place, considering that the only way you can get birth control pills in this country is through a prescription from a doctor, most patients are already assuming that the pills are safe. If your doctor prescribes you a medication, wouldn’t you assume without thinking about it that it won’t be harmful to your health? With that being the case, we have to make the assumption that Bayer did not tell the medical community everything that it needed to know.

Secondly, how can you possibly blame the patient for any illnesses or adverse medical conditions that develop? Birth control pills are relatively easy to deal with. It’s one pill a day. We find it hard to believe that any of the women who have been taking these pills have somehow stumbled across a magic formula to make an otherwise benign working birth control pill deadly.

If Bayer had come right out and said “This pill contains an ingredient that increases the likelihood of deep vein thrombosis, strokes, heart attacks, pulmonary embolisms and gall bladder disease,” then it could be said that their bases were covered. But they did not. They did not say such things on the labeling, they did not say such things in their multi-million dollar advertising campaign, and they certainly aren’t admitting it now that the casualty numbers are starting to come in.

The women filing the yaz lawsuit in Indianapolis are only a fraction of the number of women all over the world who have suffered real and provable damage from the use of these birth control pills. Women who, in good faith, took birth control pills that were dangerous to their health, and these women were hospitalized with painful or even fatal injuries.

Here in the Washington, D.C. area, Greenberg and Bederman has been leading the way in both informing women of the dangers of Bayer’s line of birth control pills and providing legal assistance for women who have been harmed by using these pills. We are currently representing several women who have been injured and hospitalized due to Yaz, Yasmin and Ocella.

If you or a loved one has been similarly injured, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free yaz legal consultation today.

To learn more about our yaz lawyer, Andy Bederman, please read about Andy Bederman, or watch his yaz video onYoutube.
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Yaz Lawsuit Tedious Obstacles Removed

Posted on January 14, 2010 by Greenberg & Bederman

One of the reasons that scare people away from litigation is the amount of time that it takes for many cases to come to a conclusion. Many corporations and insurance companies make it a point to delay the litigation process as much as they can, solely in the hopes of wearing out the plaintiffs. In the midst of the judicial process, there are all sorts of opportunities for both sides to file motions about one aspect of the trial or another, and corporate defendants often take many of these opportunities. They are in a good position to do so. Most plaintiffs in injury cases are facing real financial hardship, like medical bills or an inability to go back to work due to injuries. Insurance companies or major corporations aren’t facing any such difficulties, and can more easily afford the legal costs of delaying a trial.

A product liability trial most often takes a long time; especially if there have been multiple victims from the same product. Fortunately for the victims of Bayer’s line of birth control pills, the process has been streamlined by the judicial system, so women who have suffered from strokes, heart attacks, gall bladder disease or pulmonary embolismshould not have to suffer as long from unnecessary delays.

Bayer’s birth control pills, which are marketed under the names of Yaz, Yasmin or Oscella, contain an ingredient called drospirenone, which is a synthetic variation of progestin. Bayer claims that this ingredient brings with it additional benefits, such as an easier time with premenstrual dysphoric disorder as well as a cure for acne. The trade off is that the levels of potassium in the blood go up, which can and has shown to cause blood clots. These  blood clots can break apart and travel, which causes blockages in the heart (cardiac arrests,) blockages in the brain (strokes,) and blockages in the lungs (pulmonary embolisms.)

The British Medical Journal recently released a study claiming that out of all the commercially available hormonal replacement birth control pills, women that take the brands that contain drospirenone have a 6.3 % greater chance of suffering from blood clotting. Concrete evidence of this study is currently manifesting itself among women all over the country, as more and more otherwise healthy women who use Yaz, Yasmin and Oscella are being hospitalized with pulmonary embolisms, heart attacks and strokes.

Since so many women are filing suit under similar circumstances, the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation ruled that suits involving Yaz, Yasmin and Oscella should be consolidated for pretrial discovery. What this means is that rather than have each individual victim of these birth control pills file an individual law suit, which would require them to provide what is essentially the same sort of evidence over and over again, and call the same witnesses over and over again, our court system has decided to determine what will be considered standard evidence so this won’t have to be determined again and again.

So far, the multi-district litigation has progressed somewhat smoothly, and Bayer has provided a million pages of documents as part of the discovery process. There has also been some give and take regarding how confidential information will be handled during the trial. This actually should work in both the favor of Bayer and the plaintiffs. Bayer does not want any trade secret information to be made available, and the plaintiffs don’t want any private information regarding sexual history or birth control history to be part of the evidence. It appears that both sides should be satisfied in that regard.

What is important about this consolidation of cases is that a great deal of time and necessity has been removed from the trial process. With so much of the evidence and testimony already established, women will be able to present their cases that much faster. In fact, there is already discussion between Bayer and some defendant’s attorneys about what are called “bellwether trials,” in which some cases will be selected early in order to determine how these trials can be expected to proceed with the established evidence.

We would hope that this state of affairs would remove some of the barriers that prevent otherwise victimized women from stepping forward and pursuing a case. There have been a few occasions where otherwise healthy women who have been injured and hospitalized due to the use of Yaz, Yasmin or Oscella have gotten in touch with us, but then they talked themselves out of taking any action whatsoever. They were afraid that the whole process would take too long, or they somehow convinced themselves that the blame fell squarely on them, or they were convinced that a trial would bring out embarrassing personal information.

This is precisely the wrong attitude to take. Bayer has released a birth control pill that is not only more harmful to women than any other similar product, but they also overstated the peripheral benefits of the pill, which persuaded more and more women to buy it, without being fully aware of the increased risks from the drospirenone in the birth control pill .

We can’t expect that going through the judicial process will be easy, because it almost never is. But we can tell you that, thanks to this multi-district litigation consolidation, quite a few of the more tedious obstacles have been removed.

Greenberg and Bederman is a personal injury law firm that offers legal assistance for injury victims in the Washington, D.C. area. We have helped thousands of Washingtonians receive fair compensation for car accidents, medical malpractice and Social Security disability. If you or a loved one has been injured due to the use of Yaz, Yasmin or Oscella, contact our yaz lawyer, Andrew Bederman, from Greenberg & Bederman for a free yaz legal consultation, or watch his yaz lawyer video on youtube.
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