Lawsuits against Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. (4502), Asia’s
biggest drugmaker, claiming its Actos diabetes drug causes bladder cancer will
be consolidated before one judge in federal court in Louisiana, a judicial
panel said.
The federal Judicial Panel on
Multidistrict Litigation sent the lawsuits to the Western District of
Louisiana, in Lafayette, to be overseen by U.S. District Judge Rebecca Doherty.
Doherty will coordinate pretrial proceedings, including evidence- gathering.
“Centralization in the Western
District of Louisiana will serve the convenience of the parties and witnesses
and promote the just and efficient conduct of this litigation,” the panel ruled
yesterday. It will also allow “the panel to assign the litigation to an
experienced judge who sits in a district in which no other multidistrict
litigation is pending.”
The lawsuits claim that
patients who use Actos, a prescription drug approved for the use in treating
type 2 diabetes, increases the risk of bladder cancer. The plaintiffs also
claim that Takeda and co-defendant Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly & Co. (LLY)
withheld information about the risk and failed to provide adequate warnings.
Sara Gourley, an attorney for
Osaka, Japan-based Takeda, didn’t immediately return a call for comment.
The company said in a September
filing that 54 federal lawsuits had been filed by then. Dozens more suits have
been added in federal court since, according to court records.
More Patients
Several thousand patients have
contacted plaintiffs lawyers about filing such suits, Paul J. Pennock, a New
York-based lawyer representing former users of the drug, said in an interview
last month.
U.S. regulators found in June
that an analysis of a Takeda- sponsored study showed some users of Actos, the
world’s best- selling diabetes medication, faced an increased risk of
developing the potentially fatal disease. The federal lawsuits were all filed
in July or later, the federal panel said in yesterday’s ruling.
Takeda officials this year
pulled Actos, its top-selling drug, off the market in Germany and France after
it was linked to an increased cancer risk.
Takeda had asked the panel to
consolidate the cases in the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago, near the
headquarters of five of the company’s units, or the Louisiana court as an
alternative. Lawyers for plaintiffs disagreed on the choice of venue, proposing
six other courts as well as those in Chicago and Lafayette.
The lawsuits are consolidated
in In Re: Actos Products Liability Litigation, MDL 2299, U.S. District Court,
Western District of Louisiana (Lafayette).
Margaret Cronin Fisk and Jef
Feeley
Bloomberg
Business & Investment Opportunities
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