{"id":121641,"date":"2014-02-20T23:00:58","date_gmt":"2014-02-21T06:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/parents-turn-down-100m-settlement\/"},"modified":"2014-02-20T23:00:58","modified_gmt":"2014-02-21T06:00:58","slug":"parents-turn-down-100m-settlement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/parents-turn-down-100m-settlement\/","title":{"rendered":"Parents turn down $100M settlement"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Erika
Erika Langhart, 24, died on Thanksgiving Day 2011, after suffering two heart attacks. Her parents, Rick and Karen Langhart, formerly of Durango, say NuvaRing, a third-generation birth control, caused the blood clots that killed her.<\/span>Courtesy of Karen Langhart<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Since Erika Langhart died at age 24 after two heart attacks in 2011, her parents Karen and Rick Langhart have fought to have the product that they say killed her \u2013 NuvaRing \u2013 taken off the market.<\/p>\n

Now they are denouncing the $100 million settlement that Merck & Co., the pharmaceutical giant that produces NuvaRing, is offering to resolve about 3,800 lawsuits in federal and state courts, claiming the company concealed NuvaRing\u2019s potentially lethal side effects.<\/p>\n

Numerous studies show NuvaRing, a form of birth control that uses \u201cdesogestrel,\u201d a third-generation progestin, increases the risk of blood clots that lead to strokes and heart attacks.<\/p>\n

Merck, the second biggest U.S. drugmaker, did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n

Under the settlement agreement, Merck denies any fault. The settlement must be accepted by 95 percent of about 3,800 eligible plaintiffs before March 10.<\/p>\n

According to Vanity Fair, one lawyer for the plaintiffs, Roger Denton of the law firm Schlichter, Bogard and Denton, said the settlement, reached after nearly a year of negotiations, is \u201can outstanding result and in the best interests of all the women who have suffered an injury associated with the use of NuvaRing.\u201d<\/p>\n

To the Langharts, this amounts to lawyers awaiting payday.<\/p>\n

\u201cShame on them,\u201d Rick Langhart said. \u201cThis settlement agreement, orchestrated by Merck and the attorneys on both sides, driven by their own greed, has all but eliminated the chance for Merck to be taken to trial.\u201d<\/p>\n

Blood and money<\/p>\n

While the Langharts\u2019 criticism of the settlement is withering, other women and families may see it differently, said the Langhart\u2019s lawyer Hunter Shkolnik, a senior partner with the New York-based law firm Napoli Bern Ripka Shkolnik, LLP.<\/p>\n

Shkolnik said in addition to the Langharts, his firm represents hundreds of plaintiffs affected by NuvaRing. He praised the settlement, saying it was a \u201cgood opportunity\u201d for many plaintiffs who fear they might lose their cases against Merck in court.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot everyone has suffered like the Langharts,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Shkolnik said right now, Merck\u2019s settlement deal is structured so that if 95 percent of plaintiffs \u201copt in,\u201d Merck will provide the $100 million it has promised. But their decision to settle won\u2019t affect the 5 percent of plaintiffs who, like the Langharts, refuse to settle, Shkolnik said.<\/p>\n

Rick Langhart, Erika\u2019s father, said the proposed settlement amounts to \u201ca travesty.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are truly devastated. It appears that, from a legal standpoint, Merck is literally going to get away with murder,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The Langharts want Merck to be held accountable for their daughter\u2019s death in a jury trial. They say the settlement is unconscionable, and they vow to fight against it.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs we have always said \u2013 we will not settle,\u201d Karen Langhart wrote in her email. \u201cTo do so would mean we would have to give up our freedom to continue our work to help inform women about this bad drug, in honor of our daughter Erika. We would rather, quite frankly, die than take blood money from Merck.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shkolnik said the Langharts will still get their day in court. \u201cThey are on the docket in California. We\u2019ll go to court as soon as the judge gives me a trial date,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Rough justice<\/p>\n

Merck\u2019s $100 million settlement offer comes just weeks after Vanity Fair published a long investigative report featuring the Langharts on the dangers of NuvaRing. There\u2019s more media attention in the pipeline \u2013 Anderson Cooper has already filmed the Langharts for a three-part special report on NuvaRing that is yet to be broadcast. But the Langharts fear the settlement will diffuse the public\u2019s burgeoning concern about NuvaRing.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the settlement is successful, Merck is simply going to get away with all of their wrongdoings for what is, to them, a small price to pay for \u2018doing business,\u2019\u201d Karen Langhart wrote in an email.<\/p>\n

The Langharts said in the broader context of Merck\u2019s balance sheets, $100 million represents a drop in the bucket, and Merck can continue marketing NuvaRing to women as next-generation birth control with fewer side effects such as acne.<\/p>\n

According to Vanity Fair, in 2012, NuvaRing made Merck $623 million. Women filled 5.5 million NuvaRing prescriptions in 2010.<\/p>\n

Legal bargain?<\/p>\n

Merck\u2019s $100 million offer, which works out to an average payout of about $58,000 per plaintiff, is a fraction of what other pharmaceutical companies have paid in response to similar charges about third-generation birth controls.<\/p>\n

Last year, the German drugmaker Bayer AG said it had paid nearly $1.6 billion to settle nearly 6,800 lawsuits that alleged its Yaz and Yasmin birth-control pills caused blood clots that led to strokes and heart attacks.<\/p>\n

At $100 million, it may sound like Merck is getting off easy, Shkolnik said. But he said it is unfair to compare the proposed settlement to Bayer\u2019s $1.6 billion payout for Yaz and Yasmin because the FDA has been much more lax in regulating NuvaRing, which gives plaintiffs\u2019 lawyers less ammunition in court.<\/p>\n

\u201cKaren\u2019s unhappy with it; I\u2019m not happy with it,\u201d Shkolnik said. \u201cBut somebody in the FDA, for whatever reason, likes Merck a lot more than it likes Bayer, because Bayer would still have a billion-dollar product,\u201d if it weren\u2019t for the FDA\u2019s intervention.<\/p>\n

In 2012, the FDA mandated that Bayer revise its labels for Yaz and Yasmin after Denmark\u2019s Dr. \u00d8jvind Lidegaard published research in the British Journal of Medicine showing they placed women at significantly higher risk of suffering VTE, or venous thromboembolism.<\/p>\n

The FDA has declined to make similar recommendations about NuvaRing despite a 2012 study by Lidegaard also published in the British Journal of Medicine showing women who use vaginal rings such as NuvaRing are 90 percent more likely to suffer VTE than those who use birth control with earlier forms of progestin.<\/p>\n

In a phone call on Friday, Karen Langhart said when she learned almost all the litigation against Merck might be resolved for what seemed a piddling sum \u2013 without Merck\u2019s admitting fault, \u201cIt was the second worst day of our lives.<\/p>\n

\u201cA knife was put in our heart when we lost Erika, and I feel like that knife has just been twisted and twisted and twisted as a result of this process,\u201d she said. \u201cWe are just a mom and dad that miss our daughter; we want to help other girls.\u201d<\/p>\n

cmcallister@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Durangoans blame daughter\u2019s 2011 death on NuvaRing and demand a trial<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":121642,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[488,13,167],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-121641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-civil","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-local-news-lead"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121641\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121641"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=121641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}