Judge Herndon Lets Bayer Depose First 100 Plaintiffs
Judge David Herndon gave a ruling on July 25 that allows Yaz lawsuit defendant Bayer to depose the first 100 plaintiffs of what will be thousands. The goal is to compare their testimony to the fact sheets that Bayer’s lawyers filed.
The plaintiffs in this lawsuit claim that Bayer's Yaz, Yasmin and Ocella have caused damage to their gallbladders. So far, Judge Herndon found defects in at least a third of the sheets that Bayer looked at and compared against previous deposition testimony of 24 plaintiffs in the bellwether trials that will be beginning next year.
In his ruling, Herndon wrote: "In one case, the revisions were reportedly so extensive as to involve identification of additional treating physicians, changes in dates of treatment and hospital admissions, identification of additional pharmacies, identification of additional medical conditions and medications, and new information regarding the use of oral contraceptives. In another case, the plaintiff allegedly misidentified the prescriber of her Yaz prescription on the plaintiff fact sheet and failed to identify the pharmacy at which her Yaz prescriptions were filled.”
So far, the plaintiff fact sheets have been identified as deficient and it brings up many questions that Bayer has to answer to in regard to whether the information given is credible. Herndon goes on to say that the court's goals can’t be reached if both sides think that the information that is gathered in the discovery process isn’t credible. Herndon, however, did defer a decision regarding the deposition of doctors that had actually treated the 100 plaintiffs who were chosen.
The Yaz lawsuits are expected to help set a precedent in future Yaz lawsuit settlements. Many of the plaintiffs have had their cases consolidated into bellwether trials, or trials which help settle mass-lawsuit litigation by showing a variety of potential judgments. These trials' results are highly anticipated by everyone involved.
