Last week, the court presiding over Yaz multi-district litigation sided with Bayer and ruled that third-party claims against the drug maker are too remote to justify sufficient injury required for standing. According to the brief, the plaintiffs argued that anyone who “purchased, reimbursed, and/or paid for all or part of the cost of YAZ” should be able to sue the drug’s parent company Bayer because it engaged in “fraudulent, misleading, and unlawful advertising campaign that wrongfully promoted YAZ as safe and effective for unapproved off-label uses and concealed or omitted facts pertaining to YAZ’s safety profile.”

More specifically, the plaintiffs accuse Bayer of advertising Yaz as adequate treatment for non-essential problems like acne and pre-menstrual syndrome without appropriately warning of the increased risks of heart and gallbladder problems associated with the drug. But the court concluded that the reasoning presented was too broad since “multiple steps separate the alleged wrongful conduct…and the alleged injuries…including patient preference, the independent judgment of the prescribing physician, and the reimbursement decision rendered by the third party payer and its benefits manager.”