Yvette Ferrer of Ferrer Poirot Feller Daniel, alongside a team of trial attorneys at the law firms of Ury & Moskow and Childers, Schleuter & Smith, helped recover more than $1.6 million in combined compensatory and punitive damages for a 75-year-old New York man who was seriously injured by the blood thinner Pradaxa.
The victim suffered from gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) for more than 40 years and had mild renal impairment. While taking Pradaxa, he experienced a life-threatening upper gastrointestinal bleed in January 2014, requiring a 10-day hospitalization and a multi-month recovery process.
At trial, a jury determined that Pradaxa’s manufacturer, Boehringer Ingelheim, was aware that GERD patients have an increased risk of bleeding when taking the medication, but failed to include a warning concerning that complication risk on its labels in the U.S.
In addition, the manufacturer had previously identified both a safe and therapeutic range for the drug and was aware of commercially available tests that identify whether patients’ blood levels indicate an unnecessarily elevated risk of bleeding. However, Boehringer Ingelheim failed to include that information in the medication’s labels or advise doctors and patients of those facts for commercial reasons—evidence of which is supported by internal company documents viewed by the jury.
There are more than 3,100 Pradaxa injury cases pending nationwide, including around 3,000 in the Connecticut Consolidated Pradaxa Docket alone. In addition to this victory in Hartford Superior Court, a previous victory in federal court in West Virginia further demonstrates that Boehringer Ingelheim put profits over safety by repeatedly declining to advise doctors and patients of the true safety dangers associated with Pradaxa and ways to identify and minimize patients’ risks.