On January 23, 2019, plaintiffs and defendants involved in the Taxotere hair loss multidistrict litigation (MDL No. 2740; In Re: Taxotere (Docetaxel) Products Liability Litigation) submitted a joint report indicating the increasing size of the litigation in the past months with more than 12,340 lawsuits pending against the defendant, Sanofi-Aventis.
As per the report, the discovery process for the first case in the trial was completed in November 2018, and expert reports were submitted by both the parties involving claims filed on behalf of Antoinette Durden. Durden's case will be the first bellwether trial scheduled to begin on May 13, 2019, which will be followed by another trial on September 16, 2019. The parties have already nominated primary and alternate plaintiffs for each of these two trial dates. Additional trials are scheduled for January 27, 2020; May 11, 2020; and September 14, 2020, if the parties fail to reach on a settlement agreement or resolve the litigation soon. About 1,187 Taxotere cases have been closed, dismissed or remanded so far.
Honorable Judge Jane Triche Milazzo overlooks the Taxotere MDL in the U.S. District Court Eastern District of Louisiana, where lawsuits filed by several individuals assert that the manufacturers withheld the chemotherapy drug's long-term side effects of permanent hair loss (alopecia) from patients and doctors.
