Benicar is used to treat high blood pressure.  In June 2015, numerous plaintiffs sued the manufacturer of Benicar, Daiichi Sankyo, Inc. and Forest Laboratories LLC in the St. Louis Circuit Court.  Plaintiffs alleged injuries from taking the drug.  Plaintiffs assert that the Defendant drug makers knew or should have known that the drug could cause colonic, intestinal, and/or stomach disease.

Defendants removed the lawsuits to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri and moved to stay all proceeding pending for a possible transfer of the lawsuits into the Benicar Multidistrict Litigation (“MDL”) (In re Benicar (Olmeasartan) Product Liability Litigation, MDL No. 2606)

Plaintiffs filed a Motion to Remand the lawsuits to the Circuit Court in St. Louis lacking subject matter jurisdiction.  In December 2015, the Judicial Panel on Multi district Litigation transferred the lawsuit to the Benicar MDL.

In considering Plaintiffs’ Motion to Remand the cases back to state court, Judge Kugler noted that the Case Management Order 7 in the MDL states, “multi-plaintiff complaints shall not be filed in this litigation without leave of the Court and for good cause shown.”  The Judge ruled that the Benicar MDL court lacks jurisdiction over the claims filed by numerous Plaintiffs because they maintain citizenship in the same state where one or more of the Defendants have their principal place of business or incorporated.

The Judge further held that the remaining plaintiffs must pursue their claims individually under the MDL court’s case management order prohibiting multi-plaintiff complaints filed “without leave of court and for good cause shown.”