Plaintiffs in three GranuFlo lawsuits – two from the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California and one from the Eastern District of Missouri – hope a federal panel in Washington will side with them and not transfer their cases to the federal District of Massachusetts.
The U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation is responsible for the accumulation of 1,942 pending GranuFlo lawsuits being centralized in Massachusetts for pretrial management.
The plaintiffs in GranuFlo lawsuits have at least two things in common.
“All of the actions …,” the panel wrote in February, “involve similar allegations that plaintiffs or their decedents suffered metabolic alkalosis as a result of the use of GranuFlo and/or NaturaLyte. These actions also likewise involve factual questions relating to whether these products were defectively designed or manufactured, whether Fresenius, the manufacturer of these dialysate products, knew or should have known of the alleged propensity of these products to cause injury, and whether it provided adequate instructions and warnings with these products.”
The second common characteristic is more obvious: All of these plaintiffs decided not to silently overlook egregious injury or, in some cases, the untimely passing of a loved one following his or her exposure to the dialysis-treatment compound.
The product liability attorneys at Reich & Binstock handle these types of cases every day. A GranuFlo victim or the relative of a decedent can get a free consultation by simply calling the toll-free number below or by visiting the law firm’s website and submitting an electronic request.
To the injured, science is on your side. So is the existence of documents that suggest Fresenius knew about the dangers posed by the administration of GranuFlo and/or NaturaLyte long before the U.S. Food and Drug Administration intervened in the interest of public health.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced in March 2012 a recall of the dialysis “medical device” known as the NaturaLyte and GranuFlo Dry Acid Concentrate. The agency explained that Fresenius Medical Care at the time was “cautioning clinicians” that “[i]nappropriate prescription of these products can lead to a high serum bicarbonate level in patients undergoing hemodialysis,” which may trigger risk factors culminating in “cardiopulmonary arrest.” It was the sort of information that a manufacturer has a duty not to keep to itself.
If you or a loved one has suffered as a result of the use of GranuFlo and/or NaturaLyte, the skilled product liability attorneys at Reich & Binstock are here for you.
