On Xarelto, plaintiff’s lawyers win by losing

“In terms of the evidence, the trial lawyers [suing Bayer and Johnson & Johnson over the blood thinner Xarelto] had a losing hand — any kind of sane judicial system would have them leaving the field of battle, a defeated army.” But they’d signed up a remarkable 25,000 clients, buying an estimated 129,000 ads seeking such business in 2016, with one law firm alone spending $20 million a year on promotion. When you’ve got that big a base of clients to throw at them, “companies settle meritless cases.” [Joe Nocera, Bloomberg Opinion]

2 Comments

  • You can’t win on fighting drug companies. Follow the money and everyone involved. It’s a big joke with the FDA.

  • This article is nonsense. Incredibly, it left out a $28 million verdict against these companies with a huge punitive damage award. The fact that an appellate court flipped it on appeals has nothing to do with the predictive value of a verdict which tells these companies they behaved awfully.

    If you these cases lack scientific merit, that’s fine. There is some science to support your position. But to pretend that they have been “crushing on the battlefield” or whatever nonsense he spewed when a jury has already given a verdict in a single case that 4% in a single case of the settled value of 25,000 cases, you really don’t have much interest in doing anything other than being an industry shill. What is fine, too. But let’s call it what it is.