Since the Judicial Panel on MultiDistrict Litigation (JPML) decided that Yaz cases could be consolidated in the Southern District of Illinois last October, the suits have really started to heat up. In May, the Plaintiffs Steering Committee met to assign leadership roles and begin communicating with defendants and make decisions on behalf of Yaz lawsuits here in California. On the federal level, Bayer has provided the MDL Discovery Committee millions of Yasmin and Yaz documents to review and code.

Meanwhile, the dangerous side effects of Yaz and Yasmin made headlines recently when stage actress Brenda Hamilton, an understudy in the popular musical Wicked, claimed that the birth control pills caused her to have a stroke at the young age of 27, and sued the manufacturer Bayer. “I don’t think this should be happening to young women,” she said. “It shouldn’t happen to any woman just because they take birth-control pills.”