Levaquin Settlement Discussions Being Pursued in Federal MDL

A federal judge is pushing plaintiffs and defendants to work toward a possible settlement agreement, as thousands of Levaquin lawsuits wait to go to trial. 

Following a prior meeting with U.S. Chief Magistrate Judge Arthur Boylan on February 2, a follow up settlement conference has been scheduled for April 4 and attorneys attending have been directed to come “armed with full settlement discretion.”

Several thousand Levaquin lawsuits have been filed against Johnson & Johnson by individuals throughout the United States, alleging that the drug maker failed to adequately warn about the risk of tendon damage and tendon ruptures associated with their antibiotic.

The federal Levaquin litigation has been consolidated as part of an MDL, or multidistrict litigation, for pretrial proceedings in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota, where Judge Boylan is pushing the settlement negotiations after a series of early trials were held to help the parties gauge how juries are likely to respond to arguments that will likely be repeated throughout multiple cases in the litigation.

In advance of the next settlement conference, each side has been ordered to submit a confidential letter to Judge Boylan setting forth their respective preliminary settlement positions.

Although Johnson and Johnson has successfully obtained defense verdicts in three of the four cases that have reached a jury, one plaintiff was awarded $1.8 million in damages for a Levaquin tendon rupture in December 2010. In addition, in at least one of the cases where the drug maker prevailed, the jury found that the drug maker failed to adequately warn consumers and doctors about the risk of tendon damage from Levaquin, but found that the plaintiff failed to establish that his specific injuries were caused by the antibiotic.

Levaquin is one of the best selling antibiotics in the United States, pulling in about $1.5 billion last year. It is now also available as a generic from other drug makers.

In July 2008, the FDA required that a “black box” warning be added about the side effects of Levaquin and other similar antibiotics, which is the strongest warning that can be placed on a prescription medication. However, consumer advocates called for stronger Levaquin tendon rupture warnings to be added at least two years earlier, with Public Citizen filing a petition with the FDA in 2006, insisting that consumers and the medical community be provided with clearer warnings about the risk of tendon damage.

Although there has been information about the potential risk of tendon damage on the drug’s label since it was first approved by the FDA in 1996, plaintiffs who are pursuing claims allege that those warnings were insufficient and that the drug maker actively attempted to downplay the risk for years.