Depo-Provera Wrongful Death Lawsuit Blames Injections for Fatal Brain Tumor

Lawsuit comes as lawyers continue to prepare a group of “pilot” cases for early bellwether trials, with the Court expected to rule on critical pre-emption challenges in the next few months.

A Texas woman has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the makers of Depo-Provera, indicating that their failure to adequately warn women about the risk of brain tumors caused by the birth control injection directly resulted in the death of her sister.

The complaint (PDF) was brought by Leigh Petersen, as the trustee of the estate of Anita Petersen, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida on July 1, naming Pfizer, Pharmacia & Upjohn Co. LLC, and Pharmacia LLC as defendants.

Depo-Provera is a birth control injection that has been on the market for 30 years, involving quarterly shots administered by a healthcare provider. Given the convenience of avoiding the need for a daily birth control pill and the belief that they were safe, millions of women have been given Depo-Provera, with many of them receiving the shots for more than a decade.

However, a series of studies were published last year, linking Depo-Provera injections to brain tumors. The revelations sparked a growing number of product liability lawsuits brought by women who have been diagnosed with the tumors, known as intracranial meningioma.

Petersen’s claim joins more than 400 other Depo-Provera brain tumor lawsuits filed in federal courts nationwide since the release of the new data. As more women learn about the cause of their injuries, it is widely expected that thousands of claims may ultimately be filed.

According to this recently filed wrongful death lawsuit, Anita Petersen began receiving Depo-Provera injections in 2006 when she lived in Minnesota, and continued to receive the quarterly injections until her death in October 2024, as her brain tumor was not diagnosed until after her death.

“Shortly after midnight on October 5, 2024, Anita’s friends dropped her off at her home. Anita was scheduled to have a Zoom call with her family that morning at 10:00 a.m., but she missed the call. Concerned, her family members arranged for a welfare check. That afternoon, a friend came to check on Anita and, tragically, found her deceased. Anita had just turned forty-seven a few weeks before.”

–Leigh Petersen v. Pfizer Inc. et al.

The lawsuit indicates that an autopsy was performed, and that is when the brain tumor was found on the left side of her posterior cranial fossa, which had compressed and invaded her left cerebellar hemisphere. This intracranial meningioma caused brain bleeding that led to her death, according to the complaint.

Petersen’s complaint presents claims of wrongful death, failure to warn, design defect, negligence, negligent failure to warn, negligent design defect, negligent misrepresentation, fraudulent misrepresentation and breach of warranty. The lawsuit seeks both compensatory and punitive damages.

Depo-Provera Lawsuit “Pilot” Trials Update

Petersen’s lawsuit will be consolidated with hundreds of similar claims in the Northern District of Florida, where U.S. District Judge M. Casey Rodgers is overseeing the litigation through coordinated discovery and pretrial proceedings. 

After her appointment, Judge Rodgers immediately made it known that she was intent on pushing the parties toward a quick and efficient resolution for the litigation.

Early in the MDL proceedings she announced the selection of five pilot Depo-Provera lawsuits to go through case-specific discovery and be prepared for jury trials. The trials are meant to help the parties gauge how the Court and juries will respond to testimony and evidence likely to be repeated throughout the litigation.

On June 19, Judge Rodgers issued an amended scheduling order (PDF), seeking to ensure that the cases are ready for pre-emption briefings by September 26, 2025, when defendants are expected to argue that they could not have strengthened label warnings due to restrictions of federal law and thus are not liable for women’s Depo-Provera brain tumor injuries.

The schedule sets the close of pre-emption discovery for July 25, with an August 22 deadline for any motion for summary judgment to be filed. The close of general causation fact discovery is scheduled for September 23, with oral arguments on pre-emption summary judgment motions to be heard by Judge Rodgers on September 29.

If the litigation survives the defendants’ summary judgment motions, the parties will begin to try to eliminate the other sides’ general causation experts. For plaintiffs, it is important to prevent the dismissal of general causation experts’ testimony, because without them they cannot argue to a jury that Depo-Provera scientifically can cause brain tumors.

The deadline for depositions for all general causation experts is slated for January 10, 2026, with motions challenging those experts to be filed by February 10, 2026.

No trial dates have yet been set. However, with the Depo-Provera lawsuit timeline the Judge has laid out, the first trials may get underway by late 2026 or early 2027.

Although the outcomes of these trials will not be binding on other Depo-Provera lawsuits, they will give the parties a chance to see how juries respond to arguments and testimony that will be repeated throughout the litigation, which may help the parties reach Depo-Provera settlement agreements.

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