Boehringer Ingelheim’s record of discovery misconduct in a previous Pradaxa MDL  should be all a court needs to issue a default judgment in a new plaintiff’s favor, according to the family of a deceased patient.

In November 2012, Zhensheng Liu died after suffering unstoppable bleeding in his brain that began after he experienced a fall. Doctors said the hemorrhaging was caused by Pradaxa, the blood thinner Liu had been taking since early 2011.

Liu’s family indicated to U.S. District Judge William G. Young that the family would approve of forgoing a trial set in June if the judge would enter a default judgment in the family’s favor based on an Illinois federal court’s sanctions in a Pradaxa MDL that settled for $650 million. The Liu family did not participate in that Pradaxa MDL, but points to the fact that in that litigation, a determination was made that Boehringer Ingelheim destroyed evidence and withheld access to one of its senior scientists.

Pradaxa MDL Settlement Faulted Boehringer Ingelheim

In the Pradaxa MDL, Boehringer Ingelheim was sanctioned $931,500 for, among other things, refusing to identify a senior scientist who worked on Pradaxa and for failing to preserve the researcher’s computer data.

In their statement to the judge, the family said, “The record of [Boehringer]’s misconduct, supported by extensive factual findings by the MDL court, is a truly shocking litany of serial disregard for discovery obligations, noncompliance with court orders, failure to produce as ordered, critical documents in advance of the depositions of company witnesses and most shockingly, the failure of [Boehringer] to identify a senior scientist employee who was intimately involved in assessing the safety and efficacy of Pradaxa as a custodian of relevant information, followed by the destruction of that scientist’s custodial file and data that had existed on that employee’s laptop, desktop computer and BlackBerry.”

The family said if the judge does not file a judgment in favor of the family, he could opt to disclose to the jury all of the information regarding the destruction of the documentation and data of Pradaxa’s senior scientist, Thorsten Lehr.

“Plaintiffs submit that a wholly appropriate sanction would be to take judicial notice of the MDL court’s findings and rulings, to allow the relevant MDL court [case management orders] to be entered in evidence and to give an instruction to the jury that it must take as a fact that if Prof. Lehr’s custodial files, laptop, desktop and BlackBerry had been retained by [Boehringer], and the discoverable materials contained therein produced in discovery, the information would be adverse to [Boehringer] in this case,” the family said.

Lawyers for Boehringer insist that the drug’s label has clearly indicated the risks of Pradaxa bleeding.

Liu’s family said Liu himself was a doctor and did not know that when he was taking Pradaxa there was nothing to counteract the blood thinner’s actions if uncontrollable bleeding occurred.

The Pradaxa Lawsuit is Case No. 14-cv-13234-WGY in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.