Lawsuits Over Depo-Provera and Meningioma To Be Coordinated Between Federal and State Courts

Lawyers will meet with the U.S. District Judge presiding over the litigation, while awaiting a decision on Pfizer’s motion to dismiss the Depo-Provera meningioma lawsuits due to federal preemption.

Depo-Provera lawsuit attorneys and a federal court are seeking closer coordination with related cases in Delaware and New York state courts, proposing a unified schedule for pretrial proceedings designed to test general causation about the link between the birth control shot and brain tumors.

Although Depo-Provera has been available as a long-acting form of birth control for decades, involving a shot administered four times a year, there are now a growing number of lawsuits being filed by women throughout the U.S., each raising similar allegations that Pfizer and other drug makers failed to adequately warn that side effects of Depo-Provera may cause intracranial meningioma.

The litigation emerged over the last few years, following the publication of studies that found a link between Depo-Provera and meningioma, suggesting that women receiving the shot may be 5.5 times more likely to develop the brain tumor, which requires ongoing medical monitoring and in severe cases, surgical removal.

There are now at least 1,750 Depo-Provera lawsuits pending in state and federal courts nationwide, with lawyers reporting that thousands of additional unfiled claims remain under investigation.

Given common arguments and evidence involved in the claims, lawyers and the judiciary are now seeking to coordinate discovery and other pretrial proceedings in the litigation.

All of the complaints filed in federal courts are currently consolidated as part of a multidistrict litigation (MDL) in the Northern District of Florida before U.S. District Judge M. Casey Rodgers, who has directed the parties to prepare a small group of pilot cases for early bellwether trials.

Lawyers are scheduled to meet with Judge Rodgers for a status conference tomorrow, to update the court on progress of particular aspects of the litigation. Ahead of the conference, plaintiffs and defendants issued a joint updated proposed agenda (PDF) on October 20, outlining items deemed important for discussion.

One of the concerns is coordination between state and federal courts in the handling of these cases. In addition to 1,346 total actions pending in the MDL, the New York state court has received 70 claims from 78 different plaintiffs, which have been consolidated and assigned to Judge Sabrina Kraus. Another 10 cases have been filed in Delaware state court, involving 332 plaintiffs, which are pending before Judge Kathleen M. Vavala. There are also 20 Depo-Provera meningioma lawsuits filed in California state court, six in Illinois, and one each in Connecticut and New Mexico.

In the joint agenda, plaintiffs and defendants recommended the court work closer with Judges Kraus and Vavala, which includes a proposed modification to the schedule for general causation proceedings, so that everyone is working on the same thing at the same time, to prevent duplication of efforts.

If approved, all three courts would use the same schedule, with plaintiffs’ general causation expert disclosures due by December 1, as well as a January 9, 2026 deadline for Defendant expert disclosures. Depositions for all general causation experts would be due by February 20, 2026, with Rule 702 motions challenging those general causation experts to be filed by March 22, and opposition motions due by April 26, 2026.

The schedule is currently under consideration in Delaware and New York, the parties noted, indicating that if those states approve “the parties intend to request that this Court modify the existing general causation schedule to match these deadlines.”

Depo-Provera Meningioma Lawsuit Bellwether Trials

To help manage the litigation, Judge Rodgers has ordered the parties to prepare five pilot lawsuits for a series of early trial dates, which will give the parties an opportunity to see how juries are likely to respond to evidence and testimony expected to be repeated in thousands of claims. Before such trials can begin, she must first decide on whether the Depo-Provera meningioma lawsuits are preempted by federal law.

Judge Rodgers held a hearing last month on the issue after Pfizer filed for summary judgment, claiming preemption because the company attempted to have information on brain tumor risks added to the warning label in 2023, which the FDA rejected. Plaintiffs responded by arguing that Depo-Provera was on the market for decades after science had established that the injections could promote brain tumor growth, and Pfizer only sought to modify the labels after an investigation by foreign regulators.

If the litigation proceeds with the pilot trials, the outcomes will not be binding on other claims in the federal or state courts but could be helpful in forming the basis of a Depo-Provera lawsuit settlement agreement.

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