Pfizer Settles More Heart Valve Cases : Health care: The dispute stems from the firm’s potentially defective product.
Pfizer Inc. said Tuesday that it reached agreements with 40% of the individuals who decided not to participate in a prior class-action settlement of a 6-year-old lawsuit stemming from a potentially defective heart valve manufactured by its Irvine-based Shiley Inc. unit.
Although Shiley and New York-based Pfizer would not disclose terms of its agreement with the Minneapolis law firm of Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi, documents obtained by The Times showed that Pfizer will pay 333 of the law firm’s clients a total of $35 million. Each of the individuals, who had diseased natural heart valves replaced by Shiley’s artificial valves, is to receive between $40,000 to $300,000, depending on his or her circumstances, according to the documents.
In exchange, the firm’s clients have agreed to drop their suits pending in Orange County Superior Court. Most claims were filed by recipients whose valves have not fractured but who live in fear that the devices will malfunction.
The recipients or their survivors will still be able to sue Pfizer if their valves fracture or if they are injured during valve replacement surgery, said Bruce Finzen, a lawyer with the Robins, Kaplan firm. His clients, whose suits had been pending as far back as 1986, include 156 recipients from the United Kingdom and Sweden. The rest are from the United States.
“We’re happy with the settlement,” Finzen said. “We’re pleased.”
The Bjork-Shiley Convexo/Concave valves were sold between 1979 and 1986 and have been implanted in about 51,000 people worldwide. Of those, about 300 have died when the struts in the valves came apart.
In a statement, Pfizer said the settlement will have “no material adverse effect” on the company’s financial position. The company said it will make the payments from reserves and through insurance coverage.
The Minneapolis firm’s clients were among 850 heart-valve recipients who decided not to take part in a $215-million class-action settlement that was approved by a federal court in Cincinnati in August.
The class-action settlement, which is being appealed, includes between $2,500 to $4,000 for each implant recipient for medical or psychological consultations. It also sets aside $75 million for research on procedures to detect flawed valves, including an X-ray technique that has showed signs of success in early stages of study.
As word leaked out over the last month of the terms of the most recent settlement, other lawyers who have clients with cases still pending have complained that Pfizer made a substantially better deal with the Robins, Kaplan clients.
