Over the next two years, St. Louis will be the place for numerous lawsuits filed against Johnson & Johnson alleging the use of talcum-powder based products manufactured and sold by the company caused ovarian cancer.
Having St. Louis be a hub for these trials was in jeopardy after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June severely restricted jurisdiction in litigation, primarily to the states in which the defendants are based or where the injured parties lived.
A growing number of Proton Pump Inhibitor (PPI) lawsuits have been filed against the manufacturers of PPI medications. Plaintiffs allege that as a result of taking a PPI for gastric acid-related conditions, they have been diagnosed with kidney injuries including Acute Interstitial Nephritis (AIN), chronic kidney disease and renal failure.
Originally scheduled to start in February, the first Bellwether trial for the blood thinner, Xarelto, will now begin on April 24, 2017 in the Eastern District of Louisiana.
In October 2016, a panel of federal judges created MDL No. 2741 to centralize dozens of Roundup lawsuits in one federal court, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California under Judge Vince Chhabria.
The U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML) has decided to consolidate all pending IVC filter cases against C.R. Bard, Inc. and Bard Peripheral Vascular. This decision will centralize all cases filed in the federal court system before one judge, the Honorable David G. Campbell, United States District Court for the District of Arizona, allowing for coordinated pretrial proceedings.
It is anticipated that more than 200 cases will be immediately transferred with hundreds more to follow.
