Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1997. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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Wall Street Journal - Tuesday, 25 March 1997.
Thomas M. Burton, Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
David Shrager, a Philadelphia attorney representing plaintiffs in the litigation, said in an interview that about 500 people have decided to opt out of the settlement plan. The plan offers $100,000 each to those who contracted AIDS or were infected with HIV -- the human immune deficiency virus that causes AIDS -- from blood-derived products used to treat their hemophilia. Mr. Shrager estimated that about 350 of those people already have filed lawsuits related to AIDS virus they contracted during the early to mid-1980s.
That number isn't expected to rise any further -- despite a $2 million verdict last week in Indianapolis -- because the time period for opting out of the proposed settlement has expired. The companies that agreed to the industrywide settlement in the U.S. are Baxter International Inc., Bayer AG, Rhone-Poulenc Rorer Inc. and the Alpha Therapeutics unit of Japan's Green Cross Corp.
The settlement plan is to go before U.S. District Judge John Grady here on May 1 for a hearing in which the parties will debate the settlement plan's fairness. At issue in the litigation are products called Factor VIII and Factor IX, used by hemophiliacs to promote blood clotting.
For years the products have been manufactured from the pooled plasma of thousands of blood donors. In the early 1980s, the risk of plasma's containing hepatitis virus was known, but the AIDS virus hadn't been isolated when hemophiliacs began contracting the new, then-mysterious disease. Plaintiffs say that the way the products were manufactured ensured that people would get AIDS. Manufacturers contend they couldn't have known the illness was blood-borne.
Mr. Shrager said about 6,000 hemophiliacs or family members of those who have died have signed up for the settlement. Of those, he estimated, about 850 had filed lawsuits.
Jonathan Wadleigh, a leading spokesman for hemophiliacs, said the Indianapolis verdict "gives credibility to those who have opted out." He said there still is considerable doubt that the settlement will go through because of complications over whether federal and state governments also should be compensated by manufacturers for money they paid out under Medicaid to treat hemophiliacs who contracted AIDS.
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