All U.S. federal Xarelto lawsuits were consolidated in one court in the Eastern District of Louisiana in December 2014. Now, plaintiffs have filed a new Xarelto class action case in Canada, seeking to gain compensation for Canadian patients who took the drug and later suffered serious side effects.
The lead plaintiff in the case is Betty Samson, who according to her complaint, suffered uncontrolled bleeding after taking Xarelto in 2012. When doctors weren’t able to stop the bleeding, she went into cardiac arrest.
According to the Calgary Sun, another Xarelto class action lawsuit is forthcoming in Ontario. The lead plaintiff allegedly suffered serious bleeding after taking the anticoagulant drug, and later bled to death. Both plaintiffs name joint manufacturers Bayer and Janssen Pharmaceuticals, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, as defendants.
Number of Xarelto Lawsuits Climbing
So far, about 220 Xarelto lawsuits are pending throughout the United States. A so-called “new generation” blood thinner, Xarelto was approved in 2011 for preventing blood clots in patients going through hip and knee replacement surgeries, and later in 2012 for reducing the risk of stroke in patients with non-valvular atrial fibrillation.
When manufacturers released the product on the market, they advertised it as a superior alternative to warfarin, the leading anticoagulant. Unlike patients taking warfarin, those taking Xarelto didn’t have to go through blood monitoring or alter their diets. Defendants failed to highlight the fact that there was no readily available antidote to Xarelto bleeding, however. While patients taking warfarin who suffer uncontrollable bleeding can be treated with vitamin K injections, there is apparently no such solution for Xarelto bleeding.
Recent studies have suggested that many patients taking Xarelto, would have benefitted from blood monitoring to keep tabs on how they were responding, particularly patients with poor kidney function.
Canada Receives Over 1,000 Xarelto Adverse Event Reports
Health Canada has so far received about 1,100 reports of problems connected to Xarelto, with twelve of those involving patient deaths. According to her case, Samson came close to death when her doctors had trouble stopping her Xarelto bleeding. She includes in her complaint reports from Germany that linked Xarelto to 130 deaths between 2012 and 2013.
Xarelto lawyers in Canada have been approached by other claimants with similar experiences. According to the Calgary Sun, one of the claimants lost her mother when she bled to death in the shower. This is the case that will likely represent the other class action from Ontario.
A class action lawsuit differs from an individual lawsuit in that one plaintiff or group of plaintiffs represents a larger group seeking compensation from the defendants. The issues at dispute are the same among all members of the class—in this case, all members would have been injured by Xarelto and suffered uncontrolled bleeding. There must be enough members in the class to make individual cases impractical. Any jury award is split up among the members.
Exclusively focused on representing plaintiffs, especially in mass tort litigation, Eric Chaffin prides himself on providing unsurpassed professional legal services in pursuit of the specific goals of his clients and their families. Both his work and his cases have been featured in the national press, including on ABC’s Good Morning America.
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