Yasmin Settlements Update

Cresskill, NJDeadlines for Yasmin lawsuits filed against Bayer, the manufacturer of Yasmin and Yaz, were moved back another three months at the beginning of May, which will allow settlement negotiations to continue. To date, settlement amounts are averaging about $218,000 per case, according to Bayer.

As of April 26, Bayer had paid $142 million in settlements to resolve 651 claims. However, one Wall Street analyst has predicted the company will likely have to shell out $2.65 billion to settle all Yasmin and Yaz cases, which seems a reasonable amount considering that the company reported its contraceptives earned $1.58 billion in sales in 2010 alone.

In the US, Bayer is only settling claims for pulmonary embolism and deep vein thrombosis, or DVT. Bloomberg News reported that these claims comprise 11,900 lawsuits involving 14,000 plaintiffs—so far.


Yasmin and Yaz Gallbladder Cases

Bayer said that less than half of the cases brought so far include pulmonary embolism and DVT injuries: it is denying any association with Yasmin/Yaz and gallbladder damage or gallstones. Furthermore, the company says it does not anticipate settling any gallbladder cases. However, gallbladder trials were included in the bellwether trials scheduled in the federal court MDL and the Pennsylvania state court consolidation.

(Yasmin and Yaz State court consolidations were filed both in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, while most lawsuits pending have been filed in the federal court system before U.S. District Judge David Herndon and are consolidated in U.S. District Court, Southern District of Illinois, which is also known as the Yasmin and YAZ MDL.)

Despite a study published by the British Medical Journal (10/2011) that reported 1.3 Danish women taking Yasmin or Yaz had double the risk of blood clots, and even though 50 deaths (between 2004 and 2008) and thousands of serious injuries have been linked to the birth control pills, Bayer is not admitting any wrongdoing in its settlements.