The U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML) has issued an order to consolidate all Mirena IUD injury perforation injury lawsuits. This order applies to all cases filed throughout the federal court system. All Mirena IUD injury cases will be centralized before one judge as part of an MDL, or multidistrict litigation.
According to the JPML order, all defective Mirena IUD product liability lawsuits will be transferred to U.S. District Judge Cathy Seibel in the Southern District of New York for coordinated handling during pretrial proceedings.
What is Mirena IUD?
Mirena is a birth control T shaped plastic device manufactured by Bayer Healthcare. This plastic device is inserted into the uterus and is designed to prevent pregnancy. The IUD has been heavily advertised as a safer alternative to the birth control pill. Unfortunately many women have reported catastrophic injuries with the Mirena IUD, such as perforating the uterus, requiring repairative surgery and in severe cases hysterectomy.
Mirena IUD Lawsuits
The filed lawsuits all claim that women suffered Mirena IUD related injuries after the device migrated out of the uterus.
The lawsuits claim that Bayer failed to properly investigate the risk of side effects or warn women about the potential for suffering a Mirena IUD injury. The Mirena IUD device was designed for use by women who already had one child and the device was supposedly effective and left in place for 5 years.
Benefits of Mirena IUD MDL Centralization
Benefits of Mirena IUD MDL Centralization, include having one judge to oversee the litigation, reduces discovery (millions of pages of documents are expected in this litigation), avoids differing rulings from judges and serves the parties, in other words all the plaintiffs and defendants are in the same courthouse. Bayer Healthcare LLC is located in New York and other Bayer entities are located nearby in New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania.