Sanofi's first win in a bellwether trial over Taxotere hair loss has been overturned by a federal appeals court, indicating a new trial to be held.
The case was one of the thousands of claims brought before a federal jury that alleged Sanofi failed to warn about the risk of permanent hair loss associated with Taxotere. The overturning of the verdict with a scheduled new trial is indicated by the U.S. Court of Appeals, citing the inadmissible testimony introduced by Sanofi during the trial.
The plaintiff filed a lawsuit against the company in December 2016. As per the complaint, the plaintiff got diagnosed with breast cancer after using the drug from June 2011 to August 2011. The lawsuit argued that the plaintiff lost her hair like other chemotherapy patients and did not grow back, which is an unwarned side effect of Taxotere.
In the earlier trial where Sanofi presented testimony from two doctors, one of which was a former official of the company. The appeals court ruled the testimony from the former official of the company should not have been considered by the jury as it was misguiding.
Currently, Sanofi faces 12,000 Taxotere lawsuits throughout the nation from women with similar allegations in every lawsuit that the company misguided the users about temporary hair loss post the breast cancer chemotherapy treatment.
U.S. District Judge Jane Triche Milazzo is overseeing all the Taxotere cases, which are centralized as part of multidistrict litigation (MDL) in the federal court of the Eastern District of Louisiana for a coordinated discovery.
