Another Plaintiff Joins Yaz Coordinated Proceedings
Another Yaz lawsuit plaintiff has agreed to join the current coordinated proceedings in Los Angeles County, California. While Grace Santamaria’s suit will maintain its individual purpose, her case will join other cases when it comes down to the pretrial proceedings that will take place in the Superior Court of the State of California for the County of Los Angeles. For the pre-trial proceedings, Judge Carolyn B. Kuhl will preside.
Santamaria’s Yaz lawsuit claims that she was diagnosed with portal vein thrombosis on May 7, 2008. Portal vein thrombosis is caused by a blood clot that forms in the hepatic portal vein. Yaz blood clots are a well-known side effect of taking the controversial birth control pills Yaz and Yasmin (and other drospirenone-based oral contraceptive). Yaz blood clots can lead to other severe and life-threatening conditions, including heart attacks, strokes, pulmonary embolisms and deep vein thrombosis.
While class action lawsuits and coordinated proceedings are very different, they also have some similarities. For example, both proceedings both occur in one courtroom and consist of many plaintiffs. A difference between the two, however, is that class action cases have one lawyer filing a single lawsuit on behalf of many plaintiffs, all of whom will share in the award, if any. Coordinated proceedings, on the other hand, involve a single lawsuit that “joins coordinated proceedings [and shares] in the pretrial processes like discovery and witness testimony amongst plaintiffs that have all filed separate lawsuits, but when it comes time for trial, each case returns to the court where it was filed [in the first place].” That only changes if a settlement is reached beforehand.
Yaz blood clots like the one suffered by Sanatamaria have been the subject of much controversy lately as more and more studies are finding drospirenone to be directly linked to the condition. The fact that Bayer, the maker of Yaz, refuses to acknowledge that their drospirenone-based oral contraceptives are more dangerous than other non-drospirenone-based pills is helping to fuel thousands of lawsuits against them.
