Status of Suboxone Tooth Loss Lawsuits To Be Reviewed at MDL Conference

Lawyers report that very few of the Suboxone tooth decay claims filed last year on a bundled complaint have been dismissed since the last status update provided to the MDL Judge.

The U.S. District Judge presiding over all federal Suboxone tooth loss lawsuits is scheduled to meet with lawyers involved in the litigation tomorrow, to discuss the status of pretrial proceedings and continuing efforts to plot a way toward some resolution for more than 11,000 product liability claims linking the opioid addiction treatment to dental decay problems.

Suboxone (buprenorphine and naloxone) is a prescription medication sold by Indivior Inc., which was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2002, for the treatment of recovering opioid addicts. The medication is designed to help users avoid withdrawal symptoms while undergoing therapy to help them break their addiction.

Originally sold in tablet form, the manufacturers subsequently introduced Suboxone film strips, which users place beneath their tongue until they dissolve. However, within several years of the design change, Indivior and the FDA began to receive tooth decay reports from patients, resulting in Suboxone tooth loss side effects being added to the drug’s warning label in June 2022.

As a result of the drug maker’s failure to provide earlier warnings about the risk of dental problems, thousands of former users are now pursuing Suboxone lawsuits, indicating that they may have avoided permanent tooth loss and costly dental treatments if information about the potential risk had been disclosed when the drug was first introduced.

Last year, all Suboxone tooth decay lawsuits were centralized as part of a federal multidistrict litigation (MDL) under U.S. District Judge Philip Calabrese, who is overseeing coordinated discovery and pretrial proceedings in the Northern District of Ohio.

Shortly after the Suboxone MDL was established, a potential deadline for individuals living in states with a two-year statute of limitations led to an influx of new claims that needed to be filed in June 2024. To avoid overwhelming the court, Judge Calabrese allowed the filing of one bundled Suboxone lawsuit, known as the Schedule A cases, which included about 9,600 individuals who were still gathering documentation to support their claims.

As lawyers continue to work to investigate these claims, Judge Calabrese has called on the parties to identify a small group of representative tooth loss claims, which will serve as bellwether test cases for early jury trials and promote potential Suboxone settlement talks to resolve the litigation as a whole.

Suboxone Tooth Loss Lawsuits Status Report

When the Schedule A cases were filed, parties anticipated that the claims would go through closer scrutiny after the deadline, in order to weed out individuals who did not receive the brand-name Suboxone film version of the medication or experience documented tooth loss.

While several hundred claims have been dropped from the bundled complaint over the past year, the pace of unqualified claims appears to be slowing.

According to a status report (PDF) filed by the Plaintiffs Leadership Committee (PLC) on April 14, in advance of a status hearing set for Thursday, only about 36 claims have been dropped from the Schedule A since the last update.

During the Suboxone lawsuit status conference tomorrow, the lawyers are expected to review general progress in the litigation in further detail, including ongoing efforts to secure required medical records.

In a joint agenda (PDF) submitted on April 14, the parties indicate they intend to review issues with certain healthcare providers not complying with requirements for production of documents previously issued by Judge Calabrese, as well as protocols for a census of active claims, bellwether trial plans and any other discovery issues they are facing.

Throughout the remainder of 2025, parties will continue to work with the Court to identify a small group of Suboxone tooth loss lawsuits, which raise allegations representative of others in the litigation, to prepare for a series of early trial dates.

While the outcome of these early bellwether trial dates in the MDL will not have any binding impact on remaining claims, the average payouts awarded by juries may have a significant impact on future Suboxone settlements the drug maker may offer to avoid the need for each individual lawsuit to go before a jury in the future.