Representative Sample of Suboxone Injury Cases To Be Identified Through Bellwether Process in MDL

The U.S. District Judge presiding over all federal Suboxone tooth decay lawsuits will meet with lawyers involved in the litigation tomorrow, at which time the parties indicate they will seek guidance about a specific agenda for another meeting scheduled for next month, so that they can be prepared to discuss the information needed for the court to select a representative sample of injury claims to go through case-specific discovery and preparations for the first federal test trials.

There are currently more than 11,000 product liability claims being pursued against Indivior throughout the federal court system, each raising similar allegations that former users of the sublingual film version of Suboxone were left with devastating dental damage and tooth decay problems, since the drug maker failed to adequately disclose the risk that the medication may degrade tooth enamel.

It was not until June 17, 2022 that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration required a label update to warn about the Suboxone film tooth decay problems, after identifying hundreds of complaints involving damage experienced by users. However, plaintiffs maintain that they may have avoided permanent Suboxone injuries if earlier warnings and instructions had been provided by the drug maker.

Given common allegations raised in the litigation, all Suboxone injury cases have been centralized in an MDL before U.S. District Judge Philip Calabrese, who is presiding over coordinated discovery into issues that will impact all claims, and is expected to schedule a series of early bellwether trials, which will help the parties gauge how juries may respond to certain evidence and testimony that will be repeated throughout the claims.

In July, Judge Calabrese called for the parties to separately submit proposals to the court outlining the specific information about each Suboxone dental claim that they believe will help identify cases that are a “representative sample” of others pending in the MDL, and “drive resolution” of the litigation.

According to a joint agenda (PDF) submitted in advance of a case management conference scheduled for September 4, the parties filed their respective proposals on August 27, but both were submitted to chambers and have not been published in the public record.

Because thousands of the claims have been filed on a single bundled complaint, the court must determine how to gather enough information about each individual claim to get a better picture of what a representative Suboxone tooth decay lawsuit looks like, and the court has scheduled another meeting with the lawyers next month to discuss the selection process further.

“The parties understand that this topic will be the subject of the October 5 meeting with the Court,” according to the statement submitted for tomorrow’s status hearing. “The parties would benefit from the Court’s guidance in determining a specific agenda for that meeting so the parties may be prepared to discuss the information of most interest to the Court during that conference.”

After the parties exchange additional information about each Suboxone injury case, and a representative sample is selected for the bellwether process, lawyers will engage in a lengthy discovery process to prepare those claims for a series of early trial dates that will be held in the Suboxone MDL.

While the outcome of these early bellwether trials will not have any binding impact on remaining claims, the average Suboxone injury lawsuit payout may impact the amount of money the drug maker will be required to pay to avoid the need for each individual lawsuit to go before a jury in the future.