Yaz lawyers are pharmaceutical product liability attorneys and medical fraud lawyers who are currently investigating and filing claims against the manufacturers Bertex/Bayer. The evidence to date suggests that the use of Yaz and Yasmin are associated with heart attack and stroke, other venous and arterial thrombotic and thromboembolic events, deep vein thrombosis, DVT, thromboembolism, pulmonary embolism and blood clots and well as hypertension, cardiac arrhythmia, gallbladder disease and other side effects.

From the Yaz lawyers’ perspective, the Yaz/Yasmin lawsuits are relatively unique as pharmaceutical product liability litigation because of the evidence of misrepresentation, fraud and over-promotion of the drugs on the part of the manufacturers, both misrepresenting the potential benefits of the drugs and minimizing their risks. Some Yaz lawyers will approach the litigation solely as pharmaceutical product liability lawsuits; others, with experience in medical fraud litigation will want to include causes of action also for fraud and misrepresentation, and will likely seek punitive damages for manufacturers. For a more complete discussion you may consider “Yaz Drug Fraud, the Lawyer’s Perspective” an article that also considers objectively the options to pursue Yaz litigation in the context of large MDL or class action cases or as individual litigation.

The evidence of the Bayer entities over-promotion and misrepresentation of both the benefits and risks of Yaz have yielded the concurrence of the FDA, in letters to the manufacturer. In 2003 the FDA wrote to Bertex Laboratories, then the manufacturer of Yasmin, a company subsequently purchased by the Bayer entities, stating: “The TV ad misleadingly overstates the efficacy and safety of Yasmin by suggesting that Yasmin is unique and therefore clinically superior to other birth control pills because it contains the chemically different progestin drospirinon.” Despite the FDA correspondence, Bertex and then Bayer continued to mislead the public in their advertising, both misrepresenting the drug as superior to other birth control pharmaceuticals and minimizing the risks.

In 2008 the FDA wrote to Bayer, again warning of the misleading character of its television advertisements for Yaz and Yasmin to obscure the risks of the drug. According to the FDA “The overall effect of the distracting visuals, graphics, concurrent supers and background music is to undermine the communication of the important risk information, minimizing these risks and misleadingly suggesting that Yaz is safer than has been demonstrated by substantial evidence or substantial clinical experience.” And the risks that the FDA considered were minimized by Bayer in its advertising, included venous and arterial thrombotic and thromboembolic events, such as myocardial infarction (heart attack), thromboembolism and stroke, hepatic neoplasia, gallbladder disease and hypertension.

Our Yaz drug fraud lawyers consider that there are substantial advantages to including fraud and misrepresentation “causes of action” to the usual strict product liability and negligence claims commonly brought in drug product liability litigation. One advantage is that there will be the potential to obtain “punitive damages,” in addition to the usual compensatory damages, to punish the drug company for its misrepresentations and to set an example so that other drug companies will not use the same tactic of misrepresentation again.

Punitive damages may indeed be deemed appropriate and justified. As the result of the Bayer entities misrepresentation of the benefits and risks of Yas and Yasmin in its television commercials it quickly obtained an advantage over the other manufacturers of birth control pills. Our Yaz drug fraud lawyers consider that the success of Yaz and Yasmin indeed can be directly attributable to its misrepresentations with regard to the drugs purported benefits over other birth control pharmaceuticals. The Bayer entities have made their huge profits in substantial part because of their advertising misrepresentations, and as our Yaz drug fraud lawyers analyze it, punitive damages would be justified to strip Bayer of its ill-gained profit and to set the example for other drug companies that they too must refrain from misrepresentation as the means to gain the competitive advantage.

Ray Henke, Senior Pharmaceutical and Medical Fraud Trial Lawyer, the Henke Law Group. Mr. Henke has extensive experience both in pharmaceutical product liability litigation and in drug and medical fraud lawsuits.