DLA Piper

Resolving complex litigation at an early stage

Every day, life sciences companies are improving outcomes and changing lives. Litigation can disrupt this progress and cut to the core of your business. We’re here to help. With bold solutions to every challenge, we partner with clients across the life sciences industry to quickly mitigate, limit, and resolve claims and disputes.

Our global team of lawyers in 40+ countries guide clients through some of the most complex and challenging disputes and litigation in the Life Sciences industry. These include government investigations and contractual disputes, product liability claims, antitrust, class actions, mass tort claims, and multidistrict litigation.

Our litigators are well versed in science – we craft legal strategies informed by both legal knowledge and scientific nuance. Many of our team members are scientists by training, with PhDs or other advanced scientific degrees, and can translate technical facts to judges, juries, and expert witnesses – an advantage in trials.

“Their strength is that they work as a team. They know their strengths and bring people in for all areas of mass torts, from science experts to coordinators.”

Client, Chambers USA 2021

At every step of the product and regulatory lifecycle, we can advise on protecting your reputation, products, and revenue streams, particularly products under patent protection.

From enhanced AI capabilities to decentralized clinical trials, new technologies and processes are changing the nature of liability and risk. Combined with pricing and distribution issues, and increased enforcement activity, today’s challenges require modern solutions. We provide a coordinated approach across practice areas and jurisdictions and innovative legal advice. We’ll work closely with you to solve issues in emerging areas of law and develop flexible solutions that protect your business and maintain your competitive edge. This includes using our best-in-class AI tool, Aiscension, to help you identify the risks of prohibited, anti-competitive cartel activity.

With a focus on achieving success through early actions and disposition of claims, we navigate the complexities and subtleties of life sciences litigation to protect our clients and strengthen the law. From advising the world’s leading medical device company to achieving groundbreaking legal victories for pharmaceutical clients, our teams consistently resolve claims and bring mass torts to an early end.

Awards and recognition

Experience

After nearly 8 years and more than 300 cases filed, we achieved a huge mass tort litigation victory for Novo Nordisk. The plaintiffs alleged they had developed pancreatic cancer as a result of taking Victoza, a diabetes medication. The MDL and CA state courts excluded all of the plaintiffs’ general causation experts and concluded that the FDA would not have allowed Novo to include a pancreatic cancer warning on the Victoza label. The plaintiffs settled their claims against all manufacturers other than Novo. This is an important victory both for Novo and for the industry, preserving the robust causation ruling and its preemption holding in a challenging jurisdiction for pharmaceutical defendants.
We are co-national counsel for Sanofi for litigation and regulatory issues relating to Zantac (ranitidine), a common heartburn medication, which allegedly contains and/or is contaminated with NDMA, a possible carcinogen. Our team is primarily responsible for the class action cases, a CA state Prop 65 case, and expert development and science issues in the litigation. The personal injury cases include claims for failure to warn, design and manufacturing defects, negligence, breach of express and implied warranties, violation of consumer protection laws, unjust enrichment, loss of consortium, and wrongful death. The class cases allege putative state and nationwide classes, and claim RICO violations, Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, state consumer protection and deceptive trade practices acts, as well as claims for common law fraud, unjust enrichment, battery, breach of warranties, and strict products liability, among others. We have pending motions to dismiss remaining claims of an economic loss class action complaint, seeking refunds of the purchase price of Zantac, and a medical monitoring class action complaint.
With our team, as lead strategic and global coordination counsel in mass tort litigation involving Essure, a discontinued implantable contraceptive device for women, Bayer resolved approximately 90% of the Essure claims and for an amount significantly less than what may have resulted from receiving adverse verdicts at trial. Our role has expanded into global coordinating counsel across 12 countries, resulting in a 100% success rate with more than 80 favorable outcomes from trial and appellate courts in France, Brazil, Spain, and Canada, and illustrates how we are on the cutting edge of global product liability and mass tort defense.
In hernia mesh litigation for Medtronic, we serve as co-national counsel for more than 20 different products, used by surgeons to reinforce hernia repair surgeries, which differ in materials, size, density, and other characteristics. The plaintiffs allege strict liability, negligence, and breach of warranty claims, and a variety of alleged injuries. Court proceedings are currently in early stages.
We represent our client in an FCA action brought by an individual who worked at state clinical research sites involved in the landmark clinical study of our client’s COVID-19 vaccine. The individual plaintiff alleges widespread violations of FDA regulations governing clinical trials and falsification of clinical trial documents and data, which purportedly tainted the government’s decisions to authorize and purchase the vaccine. The US Department of Justice declined to intervene about a year after filing and the case was unsealed by the court in early 2022.
Advising a medical device producer in London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA) proceedings seated in London against a former distributor.
Advising Merck in the first ever EU and UK “pay for delay” cases on reverse payment patent settlement agreements.
Advising a healthcare provider on a global due diligence review of distributors to ensure compliance with international anti-bribery laws. This included designing, providing and reviewing responses to due diligence assessments completed by distributors.
Advising a leading multinational operating in the medical device sector on judicial and extrajudicial contentious matters relating to civil product liability.

Contact

Global leaders

Matthew Holian

Partner

Life Sciences Litigation