News about personal injury lawsuits against Gilead for HIV medicine

A California court ruling has cleared the way for HIV/AIDS patients and advocates to initiate personal injury lawsuits against the company, Gilead Sciences, Inc., over the drug company’s years-long promotion of its TDF-based drug formulations.

TDF or tenofovir disoproxil fumarate is an HIV medicine that has been shown to cause permanent damage to the kidneys and bones in patients who have been taking the drug. The original form of the drug has been sold under that brand name Viread and is found in Atripla, Truvada, Stribild, and Complera.

The treatment never should have happened

In May of 2018, two California residents living with HIV who suffered bone and kidney damages as a result of taking TDF filed a personal injury lawsuit against Gilead Sciences, Inc. for damages, claiming that the company knew as far back as 2001 that the drug was “highly toxic in the doses prescribed and risked permanent and possibly fatal damage to the kidneys and bones.”

In addition, the lawsuit claimed that the company failed to warn patients of the damaging side effects of TDF, that it actively misrepresented the risks and efficacy of TDF, and that it knew of the existence of a safer alternative,TAF, but that Gilead deliberately and maliciously withheld TAF from the market in order to extend the patent life of TDF which ran out in 2020 and sales of the existing medications that contained TDF.

A class action lawsuit was also filed against Gilead by two other Californians living with HIV who also suffered from bone and kidney damage as a result of taking TDF. The suit was filed on the behalf of “all persons located within California who were prescribed and ingested Viread, Truvada, or Atripla from October 26, 2001, through the present, who were personally or whose physician was exposed to Gilead’s misrepresentations.”

If you have taken a TDF medication and are considering suing Gilead for damages, you need the services of an attorney who is experienced in handling personal injury lawsuits.

Moving forward

The ruling, issued by the Honorable Carolyn B. Kuhl, Judge of the Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles, held that the plaintiffs’ allegations against Gilead were sufficiently pled to allow them to move forward with a personal injury lawsuit, aside from strict liability.

While this ruling is certainly a victory for HIV patients who have suffered bone and kidney damage as a result of taking TDF medications, it doesn’t change the fact that Gilead’s actions demonstrated a cavalier attitude towards patient health and safety.

Gregory Yates, PI attorney in Los Angeles, has been successfully litigating complex cases on the behalf of clients for over 40 years and has been at the center of many significant cases. His firm handles both class-action as well as individual cases and can associate with additional attorneys in cases involving a large number of plaintiffs.

Call our Encino office to schedule a consultation.