A plaintiff from Louisiana recently filed a Taxotere lawsuit claiming the chemotherapy agent caused her to suffer a persisting alopecia that prevented her hair from growing back for more than 10 years. The woman, Karen C., took the drug in 2003 shortly after being diagnosed with breast cancer. After her treatment, she says her hair rapidly started falling, an adverse reaction she hoped would subside in due time. Today, in 2016, Karen is still bald but she claims that neither she nor her doctors knew about the risk of permanent hair loss at the time. She claims that if she was adequately warned, she may have chosen Taxol, albeit Sanofi-Aventis claims that this drug is less effective than the one they manufacture. In her litigation, Karen alleges that the pharmaceutical company was fully aware of this risk and that purportedly concealed it from the public in order to increase its profits.
Taxotere (docetaxel) is a chemotherapy agent manufactured by Sanofi-Aventis used to treat several types of malignancies such as breast, prostate and lung cancer. Although it’s a second-line therapy, it has been widely used in the last decade to treat millions of patients who were not aware of its potential risks. As per many other chemotherapy drugs, in fact, docetaxel may cause a plethora of serious side effects such as weight loss, neutropenia, diarrhea and hair loss. However, the pharmaceutical company never mentioned that, in some instances, women who became bald could never grow their hair back since this adverse reaction was, indeed, permanent. Alopecia can be a disfiguring condition that may negatively affect a woman’s quality of life, leading to psychological damage, loss of self-esteem and depression.
Plaintiffs are now arguing that Sanofi-Aventis failed to warn them about this serious side effect, and that they would have chosen another treatment if they knew about it. Those who permanently lost their hair such as Karen C. are now seeking proper monetary compensation for all the damage they suffered and will have to endure for the rest of their lives. Last October, a total of 33 cases have been centralized in the Eastern District of Louisiana in the Products Liability Litigation MDL No. 2740, supervised by Judge Lance M. Africk to speed up the proceedings and simplify the legal process. Although the mass tort is still in its pre-trial phase, it rapidly grew to 200 total cases as new plaintiffs seek the help of an attorney to bring their cases to a court every day.
