Xarelto Lawsuits in Pennsylvania Organized as Mass Tort

As a growing number of Xarelto lawsuits continue to be filed throughout the country, mass tort proceedings have been established in Philadelphia for all state court cases brought in Pennsylvania over side effects of the controversial anticoagulant, which has been linked to reports of uncontrollable bleeding and death.

At least 75 complaints have been filed against Bayer Healthcare and Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen Pharmaceuticals subsidiary in Pennsylvania state court, which all involve similar allegations that the drug makers failed to adequately warn about the risk of bleeding from Xarelto side effects and the lack of an effective antidote to allow doctors to treat hemorrhages that may develop among users of the drug.

On Wednesday, Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas Administrative Judge Kevin Dougherty ordered that all Xarelto cases filed throughout the state will be centralized for pretrial proceedings as part of a “mass tort”.

The consolidation is similar to what has been established in the federal court system, where a Xarelto MDL (Multidistrict Litigation) has been established for complaints filed in U.S. District Courts throughout the country, reducing the risk of duplicative discovery in various cases, avoiding conflicting pretrial rulings from different judges and serving the convenience of the parties, witnesses and the courts.

The Pennsylvania Xarelto lawsuits will be transferred to the state’s Complex Litigation Center, despite objections raised by the drug makers. Attorneys for Bayer and Janssen opposed the establishment of a Xarelto mass tort in Pennsylvania, arguing it was unnecessary and not appropriate because most of the plaintiffs bringing the cases were from out-of-state.

In the federal court system, pretrial proceedings have been centralized before U.S. District Judge Eldon E. Fallon in the Eastern District of Louisiana, where at least 86 cases are currently pending.

Xarelto Bleeding Risks

Xarelto (rivaroxoaban) is a new-generation anticoagulant introduced in 2011 as an alternative to Coumadin (warfarin), which has been the go-to treatment for prevention of blood clots for years. However, unlike warfarin, there is no reversal agent for Xarelto to stop the blood thinning effects of the medication, leading to a number of reports involving severe injury or death associated with uncontrollable bleeding.

Despite the reports of bleeding problems, Xarelto has been promoted as superior to warfarin, with the drug makers indicating that it is easier to use, since it does not require regular blood monitoring. However, several recent studies have raised questions about those claims, with researchers suggesting that Xarelto blood monitoring may actually help doctors identify patients at the greatest risk of bleeding.

As Xarelto injury lawyers continue to review and file cases over the coming months, it is widely expected that several thousand lawsuits will be filed nationwide.

As part of the coordinated pretrial proceedings for the Xarelto litigation in both the federal court system and Pennsylvania state court, it is expected that a small group of cases will be selected as “bellwether” claims, which will then be prepared for early trial dates to help the parties gauge juries may respond to certain evidence and testimony that is likely to be repeated throughout the cases. While the outcomes of these early test trials are not binding on other complaints, they may facilitate negotiations to reach Xarelto settlements and avoid the need for hundreds of individual trials to be scheduled throughout the country.