Xarelto Class Action Lawsuit-Like Centralization for Bleeding Injury Cases in Federal MDL

Austin Kirk

By Austin Kirk
Posted October 13, 2014

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UPDATE: Following a $775 million global settlement announced in March 2019, Saiontz & Kirk, P.A. is no longer reviewing new Xarelto cases. This page is provided for informational purposes only.

UPDATE 12/12/2014: Following a hearing before the U.S. JPML on December 4, an order was issued establishing a Xarelto MDL before U.S. District Judge Eldon Fallon in the Eastern District of Louisiana.

A motion has been filed in the federal court system, seeking to consolidated all Xarelto bleeding injury cases as part of an MDL, or Multidistrict Litigation. While such centralized pretrial proceedings are often referred to as a Xarelto class action lawsuit, each case will remain an individual claim and there are important differences between an MDL and class action.

There are currently only about two dozen Xarelto lawsuits pending nationwide, with the cases spread across the country in several different U.S. District Courts. However, as individuals and families continue to discover that severe bleeding injuries or deaths may have been caused by side effects of Xarelto, it is ultimately expected that thousands of complaints will eventually be filed.

The U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML) is being asked to centralize the cases before one judge in the Southern District of Illinois for coordinated management, to reduce duplicative discovery, avoid conflicting orders from different courts and to more effectively more the cases through the court system.

The JPML is likely to soon schedule oral arguments to hear both sides express their thoughts about whether the consolidation should take place. While the initial Xarelto MDL proposal cases for the cases to be centralized before U.S. District Judge David R. Herndon, it is unclear at this point whether the drug manufacturers, Bayer and Johnson & Johnson, will oppose centralization or call for the cases to be transferred to a different judge.

Xarelto MDL vs. Class Action Lawsuit

If the request is granted, bleeding injury lawsuits filed in U.S. District Courts nationwide would be transferred into the Xarelto MDL for discovery and pretrial proceedings.

Since all of the complaints involve nearly identical allegations, many people are likely to refer to the MDL as a class action. However, if a Xarelto settlement is not reached following the coordinated proceedings, each individual case will go before a separate jury to determine if the plaintiffs’ bleeding injury was caused by the drug makers’ failure to warn.

Unlike a class action, where all claims are tried through a class representative, each plaintiff has the burden of proving that their injury was caused by Xarelto and establishing the amount of damages they are entitled to.

Since the circumstances surrounding the use of the medication and bleeding injury will be different in each case, the claims can not be judged based on the same set of facts.

The Xarelto injury lawyers at Saiontz & Kirk, P.A. are providing free consultations and claim evaluations for individuals nationwide to help determine if financial compensation may be available for:

  • Internal Bleeding
  • Gastrointestinal Bleeds
  • Brain Hemorrhage
  • Hemorrhagic Stroke
  • Wrongful Death

All cases are reviewed under a contingency fee agreement, which means that there are no out-of-pocket costs to hire a lawyer and there are no attorneys fees or reimbursement of expenses unless we are successful obtaining a recovery for a bleeding injury suffered by you or a loved one.

UPDATE: Following a $775 million global settlement announced in March 2019, Saiontz & Kirk, P.A. is no longer reviewing new Xarelto cases. This page is provided for informational purposes only.

1 Comment • Add Your Comments

  • Tiwanda says:

    I was diagnosed June 18th, 2016 with a pulmonary embolism i was placed on Xarelto…. I took this drug for three weeks….on July 4th, 2016.. I was taken to the ER for PROFUSELY VAGINAL BLEEDING…IT WAS NOT MY PERIOD…I’m a 47 year old who’s in MENOPAUSE….haven’t had a period since10/2014….the scary part is they had no way of stopping the bleeding…..i laid in that hospital bed all night with a DIAPER on that’s how bad i was bleeding …laying there with the fear that i was going to bleed to death and not see day break…

    Posted on July 8, 2016 at 11:54 pm

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