New Xarelto lawsuits continue to be filed as state and federal courts continue pretrial processing of thousands of similar claims.

In the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, about 620 Xarelto lawsuits are being processed through a mass tort program under the supervision of Judge Arnold New. Plaintiffs are now allowed to file “efficacy claims” addressing injuries other than bleeding injuries, such as those that result from blood clots.

At the same time, a federal district court in Louisiana is overseeing a multidistrict litigation consisting of over 2,800 Xarelto lawsuits. A recent pretrial order in that litigation set a deadline of May 20, 2016 for filing bundled Xarelto lawsuits covered by a single filing fee. Claims filed after that deadline will need to be filed individually, with a filing fee assessed for each claim.

Allegations in Xarelto Lawsuits

Generally, the plaintiffs in these Xarelto lawsuits are former Xarelto patients, and their close relatives, who say they experienced dangerous bleeding injuries and other severe side effects resulting from their use of the blood thinner. They claim that the drug’s manufacturers failed to properly warn about the side effects associated with the drug, particularly the risk of excessive bleeding.

Plaintiffs in the Philadelphia litigation say that in 2012 alone, over 2,000 serious adverse events were reported in association with Xarelto treatment, 151 of which ended in the patient’s death.

Xarelto is a blood thinner originally approved by the FDA in 2011. It’s prescribed to help prevent blood clots and related injuries in patients with atrial fibrillation and those who recently underwent hip or knee replacements.

Despite negative reports, sales of Xarelto have been brisk – which plaintiffs attribute to aggressive marketing by its manufacturers. Sales in the fourth quarter of 2014 reached $414 million, vastly surpassing the rate of sales in previous years.

Xarelto was developed to offer certain advantages over the older blood thinner warfarin. Warfarin had dominated the blood thinner market for over 50 years. However, it requires patients to undergo regular blood testing and dosage adjustments.

Plaintiffs in these Xarelto lawsuits take issue with that lack of blood testing, saying that evidence from clinical trials showed regular blood testing would have made Xarelto treatment safer. They say that blood testing as infrequently as once a year could help identify patients at risk for major bleeding injuries.They argue that manufacturers Bayer and Janssen Pharmaceuticals should have informed doctors and patients about the safety advantages that regular blood testing could provide.

The first trials in these mass tort programs are expected to begin in 2017. More claims are expected to be added between now and then.

Multidistrict litigations, or MDLs, are established where large numbers of lawsuits are filed at roughly the same time, alleging very similar facts — a situation not uncommon in large-scale pharmaceutical products liability litigation. The MDL process allows a single court to handle pretrial issues common to most or all of the claims more efficiently.

The Xarelto MDL is filed under MDL no. 2592 and is being overseen by Judge Eldon Fallon of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.