Depo-Provera Lawyers Will Meet With MDL Judge For Initial Case Management Conference on Friday

Court will review the organizational structure for the Depo-Provera MDL, and how the litigation will move forward now that brain tumor lawsuits filed nationwide have been centralized before one judge.

The U.S. District Judge appointed earlier this month to preside over all federal Depo-Provera brain tumor lawsuits will meet with lawyers involved in the cases on Friday, for an initial case management conference in the recently established multidistrict litigation (MDL).

Although the Depo-Provera shot has been widely marketed as a safe and effective form of birth control since at least 1992, the litigation emerged late last year after studies found a link between meningioma and Depo-Provera injections, with some women facing a more than five times higher risk of developing the dangerous brain tumors.

Given similar questions of fact and law raised in complaints brought throughout the federal court system, the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation established the Depo-Provera MDL on February 7, transferring claims involving women nationwide to Judge M. Casey Rodgers in the Northern District of Florida, for coordinated discovery and pretrial proceedings.

Days after she was appointed, Judge Rodgers announced that she will hold the first meeting with parties involved in the cases on February 21, at which time the Court is expected to discuss how to “facilitate the expeditions, economical, and just resolution of this litigation,” according to a pretrial order (PDF) issued last week.

The Depo-Provera shot has been aggressively marketed as a safe and effective form of birth control for decades, leading more than 70 million women to receive the injections.

However, lawsuits now allege that the drug makers have failed to adequately warn about the potential meningioma side effects from Depo-Provera, with women indicating that they may have avoided developing a brain tumor if information about the risk had been provided to users and the medical community.

As part of the coordinated management of the litigation, it is expected that Judge Rodgers will appoint a small number of Depo-Provera lawyers to serve in various leadership positions during the MDL proceedings, and establish a “bellwether” process where a group of representative claims are prepared for early trial dates.

In advance of the initial case management conference later this week, Judge Rodgers has advised the parties to be prepared to discuss an appropriate leadership structure in the Depo-Provera MDL, how to preserve and protect sensitive information, and to identify major legal issues at play in the litigation.

The Court also issued a separate pretrial order (PDF) on February 13, establishing docketing and filing procedures in the MDL, which is ultimately expected to include several thousand Depo-Provera lawsuits as women continue to file new claims over the coming months and years.

However, if the parties fail to reach a Depo-Provera MDL settlement or another resolution after all pretrial proceedings are concluded, each individual meningioma lawsuit may later be remanded back to the U.S. District Court where it was initially filed for an individual trial in the future.