Bayer Wins Dismissal of All Cases in the Mirena IIH MDL

On June 11, 2019, Judge Paul Engelmayer of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York granted summary judgment to Bayer in the Mirena Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension (IIH) product liability multidistrict litigation (MDL), finding that plaintiffs had failed to “come forward with sufficient reliable, non-speculative evidence from which a reasonable factfinder could determine, by a preponderance of the evidence, that Mirena caused plaintiffs’ injuries.” This summary judgment decision comes after the Court “excluded as unreliable plaintiffs’ general causation witnesses” in October 2018. The decision affirms that the plaintiffs have failed to provide reliable testimony on the essential issue of causation, either from their own paid experts or any other source, which is a requirement for cases of this nature to proceed. As Judge Engelmayer wrote in his opinion, “the items on which plaintiffs rely—following exclusion of their expert witnesses—to establish Mirena’s causation of IIH do not do so. None comes remotely close.” The Court entered judgment in all cases in the MDL, which according to the Court was approximately 920 cases.

This was another significant victory in the IIH MDL for Goldman Ismail clients Bayer Healthcare Pharmaceuticals Inc., Bayer Pharma AG, and Bayer Oy. Shayna Cook serves as co-lead national defense counsel in the Mirena IIH MDL. Brian O’Donoghue is national coordination counsel. Kenneth Baum, J.D., M.D. leads the national science and expert team. Other team members include Tarek Ismail, Emma Ross, Allyson Julien, Laura Sexton, and Michael Casner. Co-counsel are from Covington & Burling LLP and Shook, Hardy & Bacon LLP.

Press coverage of the summary judgment ruling is available here, here, and here.