Accoring to this press release from a plaintiffs' lawfirm, the New Jersey state courts intend to consolidate the ONJ and femur fracture Fosamax® trials, holding all of them before the same judge, thus:
. . . .[T]he Honorable Carol E. Higbee, who is overseeing the consolidated Fosamax lawsuits, In re: Fosamax Litigation (No. 282 NJ. Super. Ct.)) pending in the Superior Court of New Jersey, Atlantic County, issued a Case Management Order regarding four Fosamax lawsuits. Because Fosamax side effects include femur fractures and osteonecrosis of the jaw, both types of lawsuits have been consolidated into one mass tort action. On November 1, 2011, Judge Higbee ordered that the group of Fosamax lawsuits alleging that Fosamax caused plaintiffs to develop osteonecrosis of the jaw will proceed to trial on February 27, 2012. . . .
This approach would allow the common questions of science to be understood by a single judge, and ruled upon consistently. It seems there will be some significant differences, though, in the fact patterns -- between jaw-bone death, and low-energy fractures of the thigh bone. we shall see.
Separately, last week, Jellema v. Merck, one of the next-scheduled ONJ federal bellwether case pending before Judge Keenan, in the federal District Court in Manhattan, was dismissed with prejudice -- which might either indicate a negotiated settlement, or it might indicate that it did not present an appropriate set of ONJ bellwether trial facts. We will let you know what we find out on that score.
