Taxotere Lawsuit: Plaintiff Asks For A New Trial

Taxotere Lawsuit: Plaintiff Asks For A New Trial

Introduction

A plaintiff in the first Taxotere lawsuit to go before a jury, has asked the Louisiana federal court for a new trial, which went in favor of the defendants last month.

The verdict rendered on September 26 was passed in favor of Sanofi-Aventis U.S. LLC by a federal jury in New Orleans. It was the first trial to come out of the multidistrict litigation, which involves nearly 12,000 lawsuits. The lawsuit was initially filed in December 2016, after the plaintiff learned about the link between Taxotere, which she used from June 2011 to November 2011, and permanent hair loss.

Taxotere, also known as docetaxel, is a chemotherapy drug that doctors prescribe to treat several different cancers, mostly breast cancer. While the drug is effective at treating breast cancer, it is associated with several side effects, ranging from common skin reactions to very rare instances of leukemia.

Since Taxotere is a strong chemotherapy drug, its side effects tend to be more extreme than drugs that treat less serious issues such as high cholesterol or blood pressure. Doctors may lower the dose or prescribe drugs that reduce the risk of allergic reactions to deal with these types of side effects. 

The drug carries a black box warning that includes five complications that can be severe or fatal: toxic death, low blood cell counts, liver toxicity, fluid retention, and hypersensitivity reactions.

Taxotere can occur during treatment or shortly after. Doctors check liver, 
kidney, and bone marrow function to make sure a patient can tolerate the chemotherapy drug and that any acute reactions can be treated.
Low white blood cell counts, also called neutropenia, can occur in people who take Taxotere. A more serious version accompanied by fever is called febrile neutropenia. Sometimes, it can be serious enough to cause an infection that requires hospitalization.

Neutropenia is a common side effect of most chemotherapy drugs. Usually, white blood cell counts drop around 10 days to 14 days after patients first get chemotherapy. 

Lawsuits state that Taxotere’s manufacturer Sanofi-Aventis as well as other manufacturers were aware of Taxotere linkage with permanent hair loss, or alopecia, but failed to warn doctors and their patients of the risk. 
The lawsuits filed by breast cancer survivors and their families have been centralized under multidistrict litigation, or MDL, which aims to increase efficiency by allowing a single judge to oversee similar cases. 

The U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation created the MDL in October 2016, transferring 33 lawsuits from 16 districts to the Eastern District of Louisiana. At the time, another 56 related lawsuits were pending in 25 districts.

In September 2017, the court denied Sanofi’s motion to dismiss all counts. As of April 2019, 11,430 Taxotere lawsuits were pending.
In August 2018, The New Jersey Supreme Court created a Taxotere multicounty litigation (MCL). MCLs are New Jersey’s method of combining similar state cases. The New Jersey MCL consolidated 353 Taxotere lawsuits into a court in Middlesex County.

Similar lawsuits are consolidated under MDL No. 2740 before U.S. District Judge Jane Triche Milazzo. Several other pharmaceutical companies involved in the manufacturing and/or distribution of Taxotere or docetaxel, namely Pfizer Inc., Hospira Inc., Actavis PLC, McKesson Corp are also facing similar allegations.