The testosterone product lawsuits have taken a major step forward. A critical organizational meeting has been scheduled to take place on July 10. This is a major step forward in the low-T drug lawsuits.

Testosterone-based drugs, like AndroGel, Axiron, Testin and others, have become more and more prevalent in recent years. These drugs purport to treat a condition called “low-T.”

As males age, they begin to produce fewer androgens, a class of hormones that includes testosterone. Some males suffer a greater decline than others, which can cause a variety of symptoms, including irritability, fatigue, loss of muscle mass, and declining libido.

However, it has been alleged that various drug makers have knowingly marketed potentially deadly products to combat low-T. Both peer-reviewed analysis and postmarket surveillance have suggested that there is strong link between testosterone-replacement drugs and the increased risk of dangerous blood clots.

Blood clotting is a normal process in the human body that helps with the healing process after an injury. But when blood clots inside the body, it can block critical blood vessels, like those that feed the brain, heart and lungs. This can cause stroke, certain types of heart attack, and pulmonary embolism. These are medical emergencies. Even survivors can suffer serious complications. With strokes alone, patients may have permanent paralysis, slurred speech, and other disabilities.

The testosterone product lawsuits against the companies that make low-T drugs have alleged that despite these risks, drug makers actively promoted the drugs. One statistic has come up in many of the individual low-t drug lawsuits that claims that nearly a quarter of men who took low-T drugs never actually had their testosterone levels tested, a statistic the lawsuits attribute to aggressive marketing.

The testosterone product lawsuits over these drugs has taken the form of a multidistrict litigation (MDL) or mass tort. MDLs are a sort of group litigation where individual lawsuits are grouped together. In some ways, MDLs are similar to class action lawsuits. In both class action lawsuits and MDLs, a group of people allege that they have suffered similar harm at the hands of the same defendant. Both class action lawsuits and MDLs are designed to help streamline the legal process, by combining tens, hundreds, or even thousands of potential individual lawsuits into a single litigation. This saves time and resources for everyone involved.

The July 10 meeting will help coordinate the various low-t drug lawsuits in the MDL. This meeting will help coordinate the discovery phase of the trial, the process of collecting, organizing, and ultimately presenting evidence for the trial. This process is more complex in MDLs than individual trials, and requires careful coordination at every step along the way. The meeting will help the lawyers managing the individual cases to coordinate their discovery process.