A California woman has filed a Lipitor lawsuit alleging that drug giant Pfizer Inc. negligently misrepresented its prescription cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor (atorvastatin calcium), which she says causes type-2 diabetes.

According to the Lipitor diabetes lawsuit filed on June 2, Pfizer knew or should have known about the potential link between Lipitor and type-2 diabetes, yet withheld information from consumers and the medical community while turning the medication into one of the most widely used brand name drugs in the United States.

Among the most recent Lipitor diabetes lawsuits filed is that of a California resident plaintiff Barbara S. Barbara contends she was prescribed Lipitor in August 2000 to lower her high cholesterol for a period of about 12 years. In 2010, Barbara was diagnosed with type-2 diabetes allegedly as a result of taking Lipitor.

Barbara’s Lipitor lawsuit alleges Pfizer knew or should have known that there was a connection between Lipitor and diabetes before it was made publicly available in 1997.

Instead, the warning was only added to the product label in February 2012, after the FDA’s Division of Metabolism and Endocrinology Products requested that a warning be provided for consumers and the medical community.

The Lipitor lawsuit further accuses Pfizer of putting profits before patient safety and further alleges that even after the label change, Lipitor’s label still does not adequately warn patients about the risk of type-2 diabetes.

This Lipitor lawsuit is included in the thousands of consolidated lawsuits (known as multidistrict ligitation, or MDL) that raised similar allegations against Pfizer and Lipitor side effects.

FDA Warns Of Lipitor Diabetes Risk

In February 2012, the FDA released a statement on Lipitor and statins. The federal agency warned that patients taking these drugs may have an increased risk of developing high blood sugar levels and type-2 diabetes and announced that changes will be made to the drugs’ labeling to reflect this concern.

According to an FDA spokesperson, prescribing doctors should assess patients’ blood sugar levels after they have started treatment with Lipitor or another statin.

Lipitor Lawsuits

Pfizer currently faces more than 2,000 Lipitor type-2 diabetes lawsuits. The Lipitor lawsuit MDL is centralized in a South Carolina federal court.

These Lipitor diabetes lawsuit have been assigned to the U.S. District Judge Richard M. Gergel for coordinated discovery and pretrial matters. MDLs are similar to class action lawsuits, however, they differ in that each lawsuit remains separate and is tried on an individual basis.

The first Lipitor bellwether trial in the MDL against Pfizer is set for the fall of 2015.

Bellwether trials are used as a measuring stick for all parties involved in the litigation to determine how the rest of the claims could play out in the courtroom. Though these bellwether trials are not legally binding on future lawsuits, they do help to examine how certain testimony and pieces of evidence may be seen by juries and courts in similar cases.

The Lipitor Diabetes Lawsuit MDL is In Re: Lipitor (Atorvastatin Calcium) Marketing, Sales Practices and Products Liability Litigation, MDL No. 2:14-mn-02502-RMG, in the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina, Charleston Division.