US Firms seek Ban On HIV Class action

Four drug companies have asked a US federal appeals panel to overturn a lower court ruling allowing HIV-infected hemophiliacs to bring a class-action suit against them, claiming infection by their blood-clotting agents made from pools of human blood plasma. The lower court had ruled the class action could deal only with negligence, and that liability or potential monetary damages would be decided in individual cases throughout the country.

Lawyers for Armour Pharmaceutical and its parent Rhone-Poulenc Rorer, plus Miles, Baxter Healthcare and Alpha Therapeutic said a class-action suit would mean a long, complex trial resulting in a tangle of legal proceedings from which the parties and the courts will never extricate themselves. The companies have been named defendants in 300 suits involving 400 plaintiffs; of the 13 tried so far, 12 verdicts have favored the companies, which are appealing the one they lost.