The largest ongoing litigation in 2017 seems to be the Taxotere lawsuit, as the number of cases filed tripled in just two months. According to data from the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML), as of January 17, 2017, the total number of disputes filed in court amounts to 705. On December 15, 2016, just 267 cases were pending in the Eastern District of Louisiana court, meaning that over 438 more plaintiffs took a step forward during the holidays season. But this sudden growth is all but unexpected. When on October 2016, the JPML centralized the mass-tort in the Multidistrict Litigation no. 2740, overseen by Honourable Judge Kurt D. Engelhardt, the cases were just 33, meaning that the total count rose twenty-fold over the course of just four months.
Taxotere (docetaxel) is an antiblastic drug used during chemotherapy treatment of lung, breast and prostate cancer. Among its many side effects, one is especially harmful to the long-term psychological well-being of patients treated, however. Patients were, in fact, never warned that after their hairs fall off, there’s a substantial risk that they may never grow back, leaving them permanently scarred due to an adverse reaction known as irreversible alopecia. While European cancer patients have been properly warned about this side effect since 2005, United States citizen had to wait until 2015 to have this risk acknowledged inside the product information.
Plaintiffs accuse Sanofi-Aventis of negligence, failure in warning, and misrepresentation. According to their claim, the company voluntarily concealed all the evidence about the risk of permanent hair loss in order to increase the profit. Victims that seek financial compensation for the damage sustained, argue that if they knew their hair may never grow back, they would have chosen a different treatment course or a different medication. Among the first litigations filed, Ami Dodson pointed out how the pharmaceutical company preyed on a population of especially vulnerable individuals who were already struggling against a terrifying condition that put their very lives at risk. Suffering from irreversible baldness is a permanent disfigurement that may cause significant distress, especially in woman, and that may even lead to more serious conditions such as major depression or clinical anxiety.
Article written by Dr. Claudio Butticè, Pharm.D.
