Bayer is facing thousands of personal injury lawsuits over allegations that the Mirena IUD is a potentially dangerous form of birth control. However, Bayer has managed to get some of the individual Mirena lawsuits previously consolidated within the Mirena IUD multidistrict litigation (MDL) dismissed from federal court.

The Mirena IUD is a type of birth control implant designed to remain in the uterus for up to five years, blocking pregnancy through a combination of hormonal mechanisms. It is manufactured by pharmaceutical giant Bayer Healthcare Pharmaceuticals. However, thousand of Mirena lawsuits have alleged that the Mirena IUD is potentially dangerous and can pose severe Mirena complications for users of this contraceptive implant.

Allegedly, the Mirena IUD can cause a number of complications to women who are implanted with the Bayer contraceptive device, including uterine perforation and migration. This means that Mirena can allegedly punch through the uterine wall and move around inside the body, damaging the uterus and other abdominal and pelvic organs. Allegedly, this can promote other Mirena complications like infection, permanent sterility, and miscarriage.

Mirena IUD Multidistrict Litigation

So many Mirena lawsuits have been filed in various federal courts across the nation that the legal system has consolidated these Mirena IUD cases into one multidistrict litigation or MDL to organize them. MDLs are similar to class action lawsuits, in that a large number of plaintiffs make similar allegations against the same defendant. In the case of Mirena, thousands of individual Mirena lawsuits have been coordinated into a single Mirena IUD MDL. This is designed to help streamline the legal system by coordinating nearly-identical lawsuits from across the country. But unlike a hypothetical Mirena IUD class action lawsuit, individual cases within the Mirena MDL retain a degree of autonomy. While all plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit either win or lose together, in some situations individual cases within an MDL may have different outcomes, which may be the case with these 31 Mirena lawsuits that were dismissed in mid January.

Within the Mirena MDL, Bayer filed a motion to have 31 cases dismissed on the grounds that the cases in question were filed after the statute of limitations, a legal time that limits when lawsuits can be filed following the alleged claims. In the case of the Mirena MDL, many of these cases were filed from different court districts, statutes of limitations for each individual Mirena lawsuit differed depending on the district. More than half of the claims came out of California, from the same law firm. Despite arguments from the counsel, these cases were subject to California’s two-year statute of limitations, which meant that the plaintiffs had essentially waited too long to file their Mirena IUD lawsuits. Similar statute of limitations technicalities caused these 31 Mirena lawsuits to be dismissed in Louisiana and other states.

However, despite the dimissal of this handful of Mirena lawsuits, the bulk of the Mirena IUD lawsuits continue to move forward in litigation, coordinated through a New York federal court.

The Mirena IUD MDL is In Re: Mirena IUD Products Liability Litigation, MDL No. 2434, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.