This month, the first of four trials in Xarelto internal bleeding lawsuits will be presented to jurors in New Orleans.

Xarelto is an anticoagulant medication created by Johnson & Johnson Inc. and Bayer Inc. that purportedly has caused issues with internal bleeding.

Plaintiff Joseph B. is the first plaintiff in this first New Orleans case to be heard, while around 18,000 other Xarelto internal bleeding lawsuits are waiting in the wings.

Xarelto is a huge revenue-generator for Johnson & Johnson Inc. and Bayer Inc. Over the course of 2015 and 2016, Bayer alone has taken in an average of $2.87 billion in sales for this product.

Although data could not be found for 2015, Johnson & Johnson cleared $2.29 billion for Xarelto for 2016, putting it in third place among its pharmaceutical products for return on their investment dollar (ROI).

FDA Approval and Expansion of Marketing Efforts

The FDA approved the use of Xarelto in 2011 for use in preventing blood clots in patients undergoing total knee and hip joint replacements – surgeries which put recipients at high risk for traveling, as well as preventing deadly blood clots that can cause heart attack, respiratory arrest, or stroke.

Xarelto’s usage was then further marketed to patients that might otherwise be placed on the long-standing blood thinner of choice, Coumadin.

Coumadin required frequent blood-plasma monitoring during treatment which, according to lawyers for Joseph. and as mentioned in other Xarelto internal bleeding lawsuits, gave Johnson & Johnson and Bayer the ideal angle to further market Xarelto. Xarelto was said to be simpler to use because it did not require this blood plasma monitoring.

Lawyers for the plaintiff state that the cooperating pharmaceutical developers hid the fact that there was no way to reverse the blood-thinning effects of Xarelto in a critical bleed situation from the FDA and the public. In other words, they purposely hid defects of the drug and didn’t provide adequate warnings to the medical community, Xarelto internal bleeding lawsuits claimed.

New Orleans Will Test the Waters for Pharmaceutical Giants

U.S. District Judge Eldon Fallon will oversee the case of Joseph B. and three other Xarelto internal bleeding lawsuits slated to go to trial in New Orleans over the next three-month period. At stake will be whether the plaintiffs appear to have enough evidence to support these Xarelto internal bleeding lawsuits to sway juries in their favor.

While both Johnson & Johnson Inc. and Bayer Inc. continue to assert the effectiveness and lack of danger inherent in Xarelto usage, the FDA has linked about 400 cases of death to the use of the anticoagulant medication.

The two developers will face many Xarelto internal bleeding lawsuits and the four going to court over the next three months in New Orleans are likely to test the waters for Johnson & Johnson and Bayer to determine if they will consider mass settlement in the future.