Blood Factor Lawsuit Update

Blood Factor Lawsuit Update - November 2004

September 17, 2004 was the initial deadline the court set for plaintiffs to submit their Preliminary Patient Profile Forms (PPFs), which are summaries of each individual claim, listing blood factor concentrate product use and the source of those products, among other information. [For more information regarding the PPF process, see "August 2004 Update, on this site.] We are pleased to announce that we submitted over 1,400 PPFs for our clients worldwide by the deadline. In addition, we are continuing to produce more PPFs on a rolling basis for new clients and those who could not meet the initial deadline. An additional approximately 1,000 persons submitted PPFs through other counsel prosecuting cases in the MDL, primarily from Latin America.

At the hearing in federal court the Northern District of Illinois on October 13, the honorable Judge Grady ordered—upon our request and over defendants’ strong objections—that defendants promptly provide us with additional documents and witnesses, including records of shipments to foreign countries (HIV and/or HCV contaminated product “dumping”). The Court also ordered plaintiffs for whom we have already submitted PPFs, but who did not have answers to all of the PPF questions at that time, to supplement their PPFs as new information is obtained; so if you previously finalized a PPF through our firm, you may still be contacted again for purposes of filling in any gaps in your prior PPF.

The next step in the litigation will be to resolve the issue of the procedural basis on which the lawsuit will proceed: as a class action, or as individual cases. We submitted our papers in support of class certification on October 8. Although the hearing on October 13 was not to address class certification, the Judge announced that he had read our papers, and indicated that he was open to considering our request that he certify a class for a trial of factual questions that apply to many of our clients. Under this approach, the jury would decide such key facts as when defendants knew their product was contaminated and whether they continued to sell untreated product after safer, treated product was available. The jury’s findings would determine these common fact questions as to all members of the class. We are optimistic that if a jury found in our favor, the case could be resolved at that point, depending on defendants' willingness to settle. If the case continues on, issues of causation and damages would then be dealt with on an individual basis, using the class jury findings as a basis to proceed.

The Judge asked us to submit ten common questions regarding defendants’ misconduct for the proposed class trial, and asked defendants to state their position as to the use of such questions. We expect that the defendants will oppose a common questions trial. We believe, however, that such a trial is a fair and efficient approach to adjudicating the new allegations of fraudulent and intentional misconduct raised by this case. The case will continue regardless of the court’s decision on class certification, and we do not expect denial of certification to negatively affect the case as a whole or on any individual claim. The judge’s decision to grant or deny a motion for certification is not a ruling on the merits of this case. Individual claims can proceed even if a class is not certified. In fact, in many mass tort cases, individual claims are litigated without certification of any class on any issue.

New clients may continue to join the lawsuit. The time for joining the lawsuit (the “statute of limitations”) will begin running for new clients if class certification is denied, therefore interested persons should contact us or seek alternative representation as soon as possible. If certification is not granted, injured persons must be individually represented in order to benefit from any potential settlement or judgment; they will not be included merely by fitting within the class definition we alleged in our class action complaint.

Please feel free to contact us, or our local co-counsel in your country, by phone should you have any questions or concerns. Also, we will post any further developments of significance on the web site, which you can check at your convenience.