Suboxone Lawsuit Update To Be Provided to MDL Judge During Status Conference

Lawyers will meet with the court for a Suboxone lawsuit status conference on Thursday, as the parties continue to work through thousands of claims brought by former users who developed devastating tooth decay..

The U.S. District Judge presiding over thousands of Suboxone tooth decay lawsuits being pursued by former users of the opioid addiction treatment will meet with lawyers involved in the litigation tomorrow, to discuss the current status of the litigation and how it will move forward throughout 2026.

Suboxone (buprenorphine and naloxone) was originally introduced in a tablet form in 2002, to help users avoid opioid withdrawal symptoms while undergoing therapy to help them break their addiction. The product’s manufacturer, Indivior, later introduced a filmstrip version, which users place under their tongue until it dissolves.

However, the FDA added Suboxone tooth decay warnings to the medication on June 17, 2022, after receiving hundreds of reports of tooth loss and other Suboxone dental side effects, including cavities, fractured teeth, tooth erosion and other serious oral injuries.

Following the warning, Indivior and its parent company, Reckitt Benkiser, now face a rapidly growing number of Suboxone lawsuits alleging that the manufacturer knew, or should have known about the dental decay risks sooner, yet failed to adequately warn about the risks associated with enamel erosion from Suboxone film strips.

Given similar questions of fact and law raised in complaints filed nationwide, a Suboxone lawsuit MDL, or multidistrict litigation, was established in the Northern District of Ohio in 2024, consolidating the claims before U.S. District Judge Philip Calabrese for coordinated discovery and pretrial proceedings.

Early in the litigation, Indivior argued that many states had a statute of limitations, giving prospective plaintiffs just two years to file a claim after they knew or should have known a product caused their alleged injuries, and that it saw the 2022 FDA label requirement as the beginning of that two-year period. With the two-year anniversary approaching in early summer 2024, many attorneys found themselves still trying to vet a large number of claims.

When the parties failed to agree on how to handle the situation, Judge Calabrese allowed plaintiffs to submit a single, bundled Suboxone lawsuit that included limited information on each of the individual claims that remained under investigation. The resulting list included nearly 10,000 Suboxone tooth decay claims, which have been designated as “Schedule A” cases.

Court To Get Suboxone Lawsuit Update

Last month Judge Calabrese asked for a Suboxone lawsuit update and new census of the litigation to better understand its current size and scope. The parties are scheduled to discuss that and other issues regarding the Suboxone lawsuit status at this Thursday’s case management conference.

On November 17, the Plaintiffs’ Leadership Committee, representing all plaintiffs in the MDL claiming to have suffered dental damage, sent Judge Calabrese a Suboxone lawsuit status report (PDF) on the Schedule A cases and the latest census. They noted that 2,219 plaintiffs had been dismissed from the Schedule A list, reducing it from 8,035 Suboxone lawsuits down to 5,763, as plaintiffs’ attorneys culled the cases down to those that would be viable claims.

That number does not include thousands of other claims filed through normal means or as part of joinder complaints brought before the three-year anniversary passed this summer. Those numbers should be reported when the census is completed.

The parties are also expected to discuss updates in the discovery process and production of documents, according to a joint agenda (PDF) submitted to the Court on November 17. The agenda notes that they will also discuss scheduling the first case management conferences for 2026 for January 21 and March 6.

Suboxone Lawsuit Bellwether Trials

To help move the litigation forward, Judge Calabrese has ordered the parties to prepare to hold a series of “bellwether” test trials focused on representative cases. Such early trials are designed to help lawyers and the court see how juries are likely to respond to evidence and testimony that will be repeated throughout the litigation.

The Court has designated 500 cases for a “Records Collection Pool,” which the parties will narrow down to 100 representative cases that will be eligible for the next phase of discovery. After case-specific discovery on those claims, the parties will then select a group of claims to be eligible for the first Suboxone lawsuit bellwether trials.

While the outcome of these Suboxone trials will not be binding on other plaintiffs, they will be closely watched to see how jurors may respond to a typical claim. The results of those trials could help the parties in negotiations reach a Suboxone tooth decay settlement agreement, which would prevent the need for thousands of time-consuming and expensive individual federal trials.

If no Suboxone settlement is reached, Judge Calabrese could begin remanding thousands of individual claims to their originating court for individual trial dates.

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