Diabetes Medication Litigation & Compensation

[Update, March 2013: I originally wrote this post in December 2012. Three months later, the FDA announced it “is evaluating unpublished new findings by a group of academic researchers that suggest an increased risk of pancreatitis, or inflammation of the pancreas, and pre-cancerous cellular changes called pancreatic duct metaplasia in patients with type 2 diabetes treated with a class of drugs called incretin mimetics.” Several news agencies ran with the news, including AP and Bloomberg, as did some pharma industry bloggers. The JAMA Internal Medicine medical journal ran a column urging more research into the link between the drugs and pancreatic cancer, an article with a concerning, but perhaps harmless, revision after it was published. We think the latest attention and research makes the case against these drugs even stronger, and we’re moving forward in our own litigation.]

Diabetes is a global epidemic, affecting over 25 million Americans and ten times that worldwide. That also makes it an economic opportunity: the diabetes control medication market is worth more than $40 billion in the United States alone. There are thirteen types of approved Type 2 Diabetes medications on the market today (comprising over two dozens drugs), with another seven therapies in various stages of research and development. There’s big money to be made, if you’re a pharmaceutical company — hence the recent advertising push for Januvia, Byetta, and Victoza (the one Paula Deen endorses), relatively new entries to the overcrowded diabetes control market.

I’ve discussed before on this blog how one of the biggest public health problems in America is the pharmaceutical industry’s reliance on the “blockbuster” drugs that exceed $1 billion in annual sales. The whole industry, from research, to clinical trials, to physician education, is oriented around creating and promoting drugs that will become household names — to the exclusion of other useful medicines and to the detriment of patient safety. A year ago, I wrote about why Merck still didn’t admit Propecia caused persistent erectile dysfunction more than eight years after competent research showed the problem. The reason is quite simple: Propecia / Proscar was routinely bringing in more than half a billion dollars a year for Merck, and they wanted to keep it going for as long as possible.

Which brings us to Januvia, a drug that stock market analysts call a “real success story” for Merck. The Type 2 Diabetes market is huge, and Januvia (marketed as “Janumet” when mixed with metformin) has captured 75% of the dipeptidyl peptidase 4 (DPP-4) inhibitor market — for $4.6 billion in revenue in 2011 and likely topping $5 billion this year. It’s not hard to see why Januvia and other DPP-4 drugs have been successful and their sales are growing. They’re a one-a-day pill, not a shot, they haven’t been shown to cause weight gain, and they have a lower incidence of the nausea, abdominal pain, and digestive problems that characterize most diabetes treatments.

But there’s a big problem brewing.
Continue Reading Do The Drugs Januvia, Byetta and Victoza Cause Pancreatic Cancer?

Last week, our firm blog posted a short note about how Actos patients with bladder cancer in Kentucky, Louisiana, and Tennessee should move quickly to file because those states have a one-year statute of limitations for personal injury actions. We (and a whole bunch of other lawyers) assume that Takeda Pharmaceuticals will argue that the statute of limitations began to run on June 15, 2011, when the FDA issued an updated warning that one year of Actos use increases the risk of bladder cancer by more than 40%.

As if on cue, the next day Pfizer moved for summary judgment on a whole swatch of consolidated Chantix neuropsychiatric lawsuits (not to be confused with the SSRI birth defect lawsuits), arguing that the statute of limitations for those claims began to run on July 1, 2009, when the FDA mandated the box for the medication warn that the medicine was associated with “serious neuropsychiatric events, including, but not limited to depression, suicidal ideation, suicide attempt and completed suicide …”  On that day, Pfizer also sent out a “Dear Healthcare Provider Letter” notifying prescribing physicians about the change, and there was also some media coverage. 
Continue Reading When Should The Statute Of Limitations Run For Medication Lawsuits?

If you were diagnosed with bladder cancer after using Actos and are reviewing your legal options, please see my Actos Bladder Cancer Lawyers page for patients. 

I wrote this post for my legal blog, which is ordinarily read by other lawyers. Patients looking for legal help should read the Actos page linked above. 

Personal injury law isn’t like running an ordinary business, not even an ordinary law practice, because of the risk involved in taking cases. Defective drug and consumer products lawsuits exemplify both extremes of our work: the cases are enormously expensive to pursue and require a tremendous amount of attorney time, but they also have the potential to be lucrative blockbusters.

Problem is, once a drug or product is shown to be unreasonably harmful by a study or a recall, there’s no way for us to know for certain what the courts will do with the lawsuits. We don’t roll the dice — it’s much more rational and systematic than that — but we have to play the odds. So it will be with Actos lawsuits: we believe the drug was inadequately tested and didn’t warn patients of the risks, and will vigorously pursue cases against their manufacturer, but the cases aren’t without considerable risk.

Consider the denture cream lawsuits. To paraphrase what I wrote last week while discussing asbestos lawyers, GlaxoSmithKline settled the vast majority of Super Poligrip claims, but Proctor and Gamble fought the Fixodent cases, resulting a judge dismissing one of the bellwhether cases on Daubert grounds.

One of the drug cases trial lawyers are pursuing these days involve Actos (pioglitazone), the best-selling Type 2 Diabetes drug in the world. The Associated Press recently wrote about the “wave of lawsuits” filed against Takeda Pharmaceuticals:

TRENTON, N.J. — The maker of the world’s best-selling diabetes drug is facing hundreds of lawsuits and likely a big sales drop as suspicion grows that taking the pill for more than a year raises the risk of bladder cancer. …

both the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines Agency have issued warnings about the cancer risk based on new research, but they have allowed sales to continue. Doctors are being told not to prescribe Actos for people who have or have had bladder cancer.

The warning will limit patient choices and could spell the end for a once-promising class of Type 2 diabetes drugs that debuted more than a decade ago amid heavy promotion.

An FDA warning that a popular drug increases the risk of any type of cancer or heart disease virtually guarantees the filing of thousands of lawsuits, and pioglitazone is no exception: it raises the risk of bladder cancer by more than 40%, or an “extra 28 cases a year for every 100,000 people taking it.” The irony is why Actos is so popular:

Actos, despite links to heart failure risk and other serious side effects, became the No. 1 diabetes pill after Avandia, the only other drug in that class, was found in 2007 to sharply increase risk of heart attacks. Avandia’s use was banned in the EU and sharply restricted here. Actos sales jumped from about $2.9 billion in 2006 to more than $4.3 billion last year.

Avandia’s restriction, of course, prompted its own wave of lawsuits, and GlaxoSmithKline has settled about 12,000 of them for around $700 million. Assuming the clients are on one-third contingent fee agreements, that’s over $200 million for the lawyers. I don’t say that to be critical; one of those firms, for example, recently spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on an antitrust action just to lose and then also get hit with almost $600,000 in costs. It’s a big-risk, big-reward kind of business, and one of the few elements of society keeping medical products safe in light of the broken clearance processes we have for new drugs and devices.

Which brings me to one of the lessons this episode has for lawyers trying to build a personal injury or product liability law practice.
Continue Reading Lawyer Branding And The Race For Actos Bladder Cancer Clients