Settlement for Bextra and Celebrex Victims

Posted on behalf of Jeff Pitman on October 20, 2008 in Dangerous Drugs
Updated on February 24, 2022

Pfizer Inc. has agreed in principle to an $894 million settlement for heart attacks, strokes, and other damages caused by its painkillers Bextra and Celebrex

According to Pfizer, the settlement will cover approximately 92 percent of the 7,000 personal injury lawsuits brought in recent months by people whose health has been seriously compromised by the painkillers, as well as family members of those who died as a result of taking them.

Celebrex and Bextra are both Cox-2 inhibitors, and thus fall into the same class of anti-inflammatory drugs as Vioxx, the Merck painkiller that caused thousands of heart attacks and strokes and was withdrawn from the market in 2005.

PKSD is a personal injury law firm handling cases through out the state. Our Milwaukee personal injury lawyers have successfully represented injured people in almost every county.

Although Bextra was removed from the market in 2005, Celebrex continues to be on the market because the FDA has decided that the benefits of taking the drug outweigh the risks for some patients.  We remind you to use extreme caution when considering Celebrex.  Celebrex carries the strongest black box warning allowed by the FDA.  For more information on black box warnings, click here.

There are three main ways in which a product may be defective:

Manufacturing Defect: The product is not inherently defective, but rather became defective at some point during the manufacturing process. In most cases, the victim is required to prove the manufacturer’s negligence is the cause of the product’s defect, except in cases of strict liability. In cases of strict liability, the victim only needs to prove the product was defective.

Design Defect: A flaw in the design of the product makes it unreasonably safe for the consumer. In most cases, design defects are inherent, and exist in the product from its inception.

Marketing defect: The product was not sufficiently labeled, and the consumer was not provided with proper instructional materials and warnings of the products’ potential dangers.

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