Personal Injury Law Specialist in Phoenix, Arizona

On October 3, the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML) issued an order centralizing 89 lawsuits pending in at least 25 district courts into the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.

The cases will be coordinated in Multi-District Litigation (MDL No. 2740) and overseen by U.S. District Judge Lance M. Africk — In Re: Taxotere (Docetaxel) Product Liability Litigation.

All of the lawsuits were filed by women who did not re-grow their hair after completing chemotherapy treatment with Taxotere.

The label on Taxotere was updated in December 2015 to warn that “cases of permanent alopecia have been reported,” according to the FDA.

However, lawyers say Sanofi-Aventis knew about the side effect much earlier. By 2005, a clinical trial that began in the 1990s found that 9.2% of patients did not re-grow their hair during the 10-year follow-up period after receiving Taxotere with doxorubicin and cyclophosphamide.

Sanofi-Aventis is also accused of marketing Taxotere as superior to other, equally-effective chemotherapy drugs that were not associated with permanent hair loss.

Centralizing the lawsuits in an MDL for pretrial proceedings has many advantages. Lawyers can coordinate and share evidence produced in the discovery process. Afterward, they typically choose a few cases for “bellwether” trials and use the outcomes in settlement negotiations.

If you or someone close to you suffered permanent hair loss after completing treatment with Taxotere, please call or email Phoenix Arizona mass tort product liability attorney Steve Leshner for a free consultation.

Taxotere (docetaxel) is a chemotherapy drug manufactured and marketed by Sanofi-Aventis and prescribed by many U.S. physicians to treat breast cancer patients.  This drug was aggressively marketed to doctors, as it was claimed that it was more effective than other chemotherapy drugs.  In 2009, the FDA issued a cease and desist letter requiring the company to stop claiming that it worked better than other chemotherapy drugs.  Even though it didn’t work better than other chemotherapy drugs, and while chemotherapy often causes temporary, reversible hair loss, a significant number of taxotere patients suffered permanent hair loss. While Sanofi-Aventis acknowledged in Europe in 2005 that a significant number of patients were suffering permanent hair loss, it wasn’t until December 2015 that U.S. patients were warned about permanent hair loss.   If women and their physicians had known that Taxotere wasn’t more effective than other chemotherapy drugs, and unlike the alternatives, caused permanent hair loss, it is unlikely that women and their physicians would have chosen Taxotere.

If you are a woman, who used Taxotere and suffered permanent hair loss, please call Phoenix, Arizona mass tort product liability attorney Steve Leshner for  a free consultation.

On November 24, 2015, an Atlanta, Ga jury found in favor of the plaintiff and against Wright Medical Technology, Inc. in the first bellwether trial in the Multi-District Litigation involving the allegedly defective metal hip Wright Conserve Implant Systems.  The jury found the product to be defective, and awarded the plaintiff $1 million in compensatory damages and $10 million in punitive damages.

After the verdict, the attorneys for Wright filed a Motion for New Trial, challenging, among other things, the amount of the jury verdict.  On April 5, 2016, the Judge issued a ruling upholding the jury’s verdict of compensatory damages of $1 million, but reduced the punitive damage verdict by 90% from $11 million to $1.1 million.

Currently, there are approximately 600 Wright Conserve cases pending in the MDL in Georgia, another 750 cases pending in California courts, and another 1,000 cases that have not been filed, where plaintiffs’ lawyers have entered into tolling agreements with the defense.  The next bellwether trials are scheduled for October, 2016.

Phoenix, Arizona mass tort product liability attorney Stephen I. Leshner has handled over 100 cases involving defective hip replacement systems, including the current cases against Wright Medical Technology, Inc., and has over 40 cases pending.  While there have been global settlements in the DePuy ASR, Zimmer, Stryker, and Smith & Nephew cases, no global settlements have been reached in cases involving DePuy Pinnacle (over 8,000 pending cases) and Wright, which are in the bellwether trial process.  If you or someone close to you has been injured as a result of any defective metal-on-metal hip, which required the surgical removal and replacement of the hip replacement system or its components, please contact Steve Leshner for a free consultation.

Stryker Corp. has agreed to pay at least $1.4 billion to settle thousands of lawsuits by U.S. patients who had surgeries to revise problematic Stryker hip replacements.

The failure rate of the Stryker Rejuvenate and ABG II Hips are expected to be in the 80% range.  Individual cases are currently being settled where the revision of the defective hip occurred on or before November 3, 2014.  As most of these devices will fail, it is not too late to file a claim if the revision occurred after that date.

Stephen I. Leshner, P.C. has  clients who have settled their Stryker cases, and clients with pending settlements..  If you or someone close to you has or needs a revision of their Stryker Rejuventate or ABG II hip replacements, please call Phoenix Arizona mass tort attorney Steve Leshner for a free consultation.

In the February 2016 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) results of a large study involving over ten thousand patients showed that Prilosec and other heartburn drug PPI use may increase the risk of the development of chronic kidney disease by 20 to 50 percent.  The study indicated that the longer a person used the drug, the greater the risk, especially if the medication was used more than once a day.

If you or someone close to you has been using Nexium, Prilosec, Prevacid or other PPI, and has been diagnosed with chronic kidney disease, acute kidney injury, renal or kidney failure, acute interstitial nephritis, dialysis treatment, kidney removal, kidney transplant or kidney related death, please contact Phoenix Arizona mass tort product liability attorney Steve Leshner for a free consultation.

Phoenix personal injury attorney Stephen I. Leshner has been selected to the 2016 Arizona Super Lawyers list, for the ninth consecutive year. Each year, no more than five percent of the lawyers in the state are selected by the research team at Super Lawyers to receive this honor. Super Lawyers, a Thomson Reuters business, is a rating service of outstanding lawyers from more than 70 practice areas who have attained a high degree of peer recognition and professional achievement. The annual selections are made using a patented multiphase process that includes a statewide survey of lawyers, an independent research evaluation of candidates and peer reviews by practice area. The result is a credible, comprehensive and diverse listing of exceptional attorneys. The Super Lawyers lists are published nationwide in Super Lawyers Magazines and in leading city and regional magazines and newspapers across the country. Super Lawyers Magazines also feature editorial profiles of attorneys who embody excellence in the practice of law. For more information about Super Lawyers, visit SuperLawyers.com.

Steve was also recently named as one of “Top 3 Personal Injury Lawyers” in Phoenix, Arizona by ThreeBestRated.Com.    Three Best Rated claims it finds the top three local businesses per category in a city by checking reviews, history, complaints, ratings, satisfaction, trust, cost and general excellence.  No business pays to be listed.

Phoenix, Arizona medical malpractice and mass tort lawyer Steve Leshner is also listed in Best Lawyers in America and Arizona’s Finest Lawyers.

On November 24, 2015, an Atlanta, Ga jury found in favor of the plaintiff and against Wright Medical Technology, Inc. in the first bellwether trial in the Multi-District Litigation involving the allegedly defective metal hip Wright Conserve Implant Systems.  The jury found the product to be defective, and awarded the plaintiff $1 million in compensatory damages and $10 million in punitive damages.

After the verdict, the attorneys for Wright filed a Motion for New Trial, challenging, among other things, the amount of the jury verdict.  On April 5, 2016, the Judge issued a ruling upholding the jury’s verdict of compensatory damages of $1 million, but reduced the punitive damage verdict by 90% from $11 million to $1.1 million.

Phoenix, Arizona mass tort product liability attorney Stephen I. Leshner has represented over 100 people injured by defective hip replacement systems, including the current cases against Wright Medical Technology, Inc.  While there have been global settlements in the DePuy ASR, Zimmer, Stryker, and Smith & Nephew cases, no global settlements have been reached in cases involving DePuy Pinnacle and Wright, which are in the bellwether trial process.  If you are someone close to you has been injured as a result of a defective metal-on-metal hip, which required the surgical removal and replacement of the hip replacement system or its components, please contact Steve Leshner for a free consultation.

On March 17, 2016, after a two month trial, a Dallas, Texas federal court jury awarded $142 million in actual damages and $360 million in punitive damages to a group of five (5) claimants who had defective Johnson & Johnson (J&J) DePuy Pinnacle hip replacements that needed surgical removal and replacement.  The jury awarded punitive damages because they concluded that J&J knew about the flaws in the Pinnacle hips but failed to warn doctors and their patients of the risks.

There are about 8,000 claims pending in the DePuy Pinnacle mass tort case, a number of which are currently represented by Phoenix Arizona personal injury attorney Stephen I. Leshner.   The claimant’s victory in the bellwether case comes after a defeat in a similar case in 2014.  In another case involving J&J, the company recalled 93,000 DePuy ASR hips, resulting in a $2.5 Billion settlement, which has been largely distributed.

A settlement agreement has been signed which proposes to resolve virtually all lawsuit and claims of United States plaintiffs and claimants who were implanted with a Zimmer Durom Cup and subsequently had the device surgically removed. The agreement establishes a settlement program which is intended to resolve all Durom Cup claims and lawsuits by the end of 2016. Any claimant wishing to settle their claim within the terms of the agreement must register on or before April 29, 2016. The terms of the agreement is set forth in www.duromsettlement.com. The settlement terms include a base award of $175,000.00, which may be increased or decreased depending on certain, pre-defined criteria that apply to individual claims.

Phoenix, Arizona personal injury and mass tort product liability attorney Stephen I. Leshner has settled a number of Zimmer Durom Cup cases in the last few years outside of this settlement program, but still has clients with unsettled cases that may benefit from this global settlement.

If you or someone close to you has been seriously injured as a result of a defective medical device, including defective hip and knee replacement devices, please contact Steve Leshner for a free consultation and case review.