Because of the vast number of claims against the makers of Darvon and Darvocet, as well as other propoxyphene products, the lawsuits against the drugs may be filed into a multidistrict lawsuit that will assigned to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. This will streamline the process and allow victims of the Darvocet side effects to receive monetary compensation to cover hospital bills, personal stress, and other physical and emotional complications of the side effects.
This allows victims of the side effects – which are sometimes fatal and can include Darvocet heart attack, stroke, accidental overdose, death, drug dependency, and heart problems – to receive their compensation faster. Propoxyphene, although banned in Europe and the United Kingdom for several years and contested by consumer advocacy groups for over three decades, has only recently been banned from the market by the Food and Drug Administration due to recent studies that show that propoxyphene can cause heart problems in otherwise healthy patients even at standard doses.
It is still too soon to estimate the kind of settlement that will be reached with companies, but since there was a significant delay between the first petition against the drug and the products’ ban victims are more likely to receive payment for their suffering. Although doctors have long known that propoxyphene is not only less effective than some other common painkillers but comes with a plethora of unnecessary side effects, the ban comes later, too, than similar bans of the drug in both Europe and the United Kingdom.
The next hearing for the multidistrict litigation panel will take place on January 27th, 2011 and arguments on the motion for consolidation of the lawsuits into a multidistrict lawsuit will be heard as soon as March 30, 2011. The hearing for this is scheduled in San Diego, California. Victims will not know when they will receive their compensation until the issue of making the case a multidistrict one is decided.
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