Judge Outlines Suboxone Tooth Decay Lawsuit Census Requirements

Census of all Suboxone lawsuits will help the parties determine which tooth decay claims could be used as representative samples in early bellwether trials.

The U.S. District Judge presiding over all Suboxone tooth decay lawsuits has issued guidelines for taking a complete census of all claims in the litigation, which will provide the parties and the Court with a more complete understanding about the nature of the cases and which may be the best to prepare for early trial dates.

Indivior currently faces more than 11,000 product liability lawsuits brought by former users of Suboxone, each raising similar allegations that they were left with devastating dental damage and tooth decay problems, since the drug maker failed to adequately disclose the risk that the sublingual film may degrade tooth enamel.

Although the Suboxone film was introduced more than a decade earlier, the drug maker did not add label warnings to alert users to the risk of tooth decay problems from Suboxone film until June 2022, and plaintiffs maintain that they could have avoided various different injuries if earlier information and instructions had been provided by the drug maker.

Given common allegations raised in the litigation, all Suboxone tooth decay lawsuits have been centralized in an MDL before U.S. District Judge Philip Calabrese for pretrial proceedings, including coordinated discovery into issues that will impact all claims and a series of early bellwether trials, which will help the parties gauge how juries may respond to certain evidence and testimony that will be repeated throughout the claims.

In July, Judge Calabrese called for the parties to separately submit proposals outlining the specific information about each Suboxone dental claim that would be needed to identify a “representative sample” of the litigation as a whole, with the hope that bellwether trials involving those types of cases will help lead to a resolution or Suboxone settlement agreement.

Suboxone Tooth Decay Lawsuit Census Protocols

Following a two-day conference in early October to discuss information that should be gathered about each claim, Judge Calabrese issued a case management order (PDF) this week, laying out the protocols for conducting a census of all Suboxone tooth decay lawsuits.

The census will include both individually filed Suboxone lawsuits, as well as thousands of claims that were submitted to the Court on a bundled complaint this summer, known as the Schedule A cases. However, any cases filed after October 7, 2024 will not be included in the initial census, as Judge Calabrese indicated that cases brought after that date will be subject to future orders.

As part of this process, Judge Calabrese indicates that plaintiffs’ lawyers will need to confirm whether individual claims filed as part of the Schedule A should move forward or be dismissed, based on what medical records or product identification information has been obtained to date.

Plaintiffs remaining in the litigation have been given 270 days to complete their Suboxone lawsuit census forms, which will include information that will help the Court identify claims that are largely representative of the litigation as a whole, which may make them top choices for early trial dates.

Following the selection of a representative sample of claims, it is expected that the parties will move forward with a lengthy case-specific discovery process, including the exchange of expert reports and other evidence establishing Suboxone’s link to dental injuries, before a smaller group is identified for the first trial dates.

While the outcome of these early bellwether trials will not have any binding impact on remaining claims, the average Suboxone dental injury lawsuit payout may impact the amount of money the drug maker will be required to pay to avoid the need for each individual lawsuit to go before a jury in the future.