The Missed Benefits of Reglan Lawsuits Being Consolidated into MDL
Back in June 2009, the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (MDL) decided that the multitude of Reglan lawsuits wasn’t going to be consolidated into one court. This decision has many people wondering just how this decision might affect the plaintiffs in those lawsuits.
Recently, Reglan lawsuits in New Jersey were to be consolidated in State court, which will consist of over 1,000 cases, but wasn’t granted MDL status. Multidistrict litigation (MDL) is what it’s called when a certain number of lawsuits are consolidated into one court for the purposes of pre-trial motions. This occurs when all of the cases share things in common such as the defendant, or specific injury.
Consolidating the Reglan lawsuit can be beneficial because consolidating can speed up the pre-trial process. Witnesses for the defense can give depositions once rather than multiple times for individual lawsuits. Consolidation also lowers the likelihood of witnesses giving inconsistent testimony which can be damaging over time since many people can forget facts as time passes. Furthermore, consolidation keeps court costs down and lowers the chances of inconsistent rulings being handed down.
The lawsuits stemmed from various patients suffering from tardive dyskinesia after taking Reglan for longer time periods than the recommended 12 weeks. The main reason plaintiffs say that this happened is because the makers of Reglan hid the dangers associated with the drug until the FDA finally issued a black box warning against Reglan in 2009. This move alone caused numerous Reglan lawsuits to be filed across the country. Consolidating the cases seemed like the right way to handle the cases, but the petition was turned down.
There are many reasons why the consolidation to MDL may have been refused. First, some of these lawsuits had already been happening for years, making the main questions in the cases answered already, which meant that moving to another court served no purpose. Secondly, there are too many different defendants involved in the cases. Thirdly, tardive dyskinesia isn’t the only injury suffered in those cases. Some other injuries include restless leg syndrome, secondary Parkinson’s disease and neuroleptic malignant syndrome. Lastly, the effects that these injuries have on the individual plaintiffs are different, too.
