Following a 2014 mass settlement, patients who suffer new bleeding injuries after taking Pradaxa may still qualify to bring a new Pradaxa lawsuit.

Pradaxa is a relatively new blood thinning medication that is frequently prescribed to help prevent blood clots and stroke in patients with atrial fibrillation or who have recently undergone surgery.

After Pradaxa first gained FDA approval in 2010, the FDA began receiving reports of hemorrhaging, internal bleeding, or other bleeding injuries associated with the drug.

The agency has reportedly received thousands of such reports, including hundreds of cases that ended in the patient’s death.

Starting in August 2012, plaintiffs who filed a Pradaxa lawsuit in the federal court system were generally directed to the Pradaxa multidistrict litigation, or MDL, set up in a federal court in Illinois.

This MDL was set up to coordinate pretrial procedures in the large number of claims related to Pradaxa side effects.

Generally, the plaintiffs in each Pradaxa lawsuit alleged that Boehringer Ingelheim, Pradaxa’s manufacturer, failed to properly warn them that Pradaxa side effects could result in dangerous and possibly deadly bleeding.

They also took issue with the fact that Pradaxa was released to the market without there being any antidote that could decrease its anticoagulant effect in case of an emergency.

While many of these plaintiffs were the patients themselves, others were surviving family members of patients who had died from their purported Pradaxa side effects and bleeding injuries.

Evidence uncovered in the course of this MDL allegedly showed that Boehringer Ingelheim knew about the risks of internal bleeding associated with their drug.

The company allegedly kept the results of its own studies to itself rather than alert the public or the medical community to the dangers of Pradaxa side effects.

The 2014 Pradaxa Settlement

In May 2014, Boehringer Ingelheim agreed to pay about $650 million to settle all claims in the Pradaxa lawsuit MDL at that time. With about 4,000 active claims in the MDL at the time, the average payout was about $160,000 per plaintiff.

That Pradaxa settlement was reached just before the first scheduled trials in the MDL were to begin.

While the settlement offered plaintiffs the certainty of payment, it prevented both sides of the litigation from finding out just how much payment could be at stake in a claim that proceeded through a full trial.

Plaintiffs Can Still Bring a Pradaxa Lawsuit

After finalizing the 2014 mass settlement, the court in the Pradaxa MDL relieved the plaintiffs’ steering committee of its duties and stopped accepting new claims.

However, the 2014 settlement does not stop new plaintiffs from continuing to file their claims.

Since that settlement was wrapped up, numerous other Pradaxa patients have reported experiencing other Pradaxa side effects, like internal bleeding or hemorrhaging – new injuries that were not covered in the 2014 settlement.

Based on these new injuries, a new round of claims has begun to emerge. Plaintiffs whose Pradaxa lawsuit was not covered by the May 2014 settlement are now bringing a new round of claims in state court.

Attorneys are still interested in speaking with Pradaxa patients who believe they may have a valid basis for a legal claim.