Hundreds of Patients Sickened by Contaminated Steroid Solution Finally Get Their day in Court

Two years after news broke that hundreds of patients sickened by contaminated steroid solution, lawsuits on behalf of those patients against the company that made the solution and the clinics that bought and administered the injections are coming to life in civil courts.

Indiana victims are part of a meningitis-related litigation multi-district federal lawsuit in Boston against a company, New England Compounding Center that made a faulty steroid solution. While the case is just now getting to court the owners and insurers of NECC have agreed in principal to a compensation fund of more than $100 million to be distributed to victims of the company's actions.

Suits were filed in April 2014 in Elkhart Superior Court for nearly 70 who were patients of Orthopedic and Sports Medicine Center of Northern Indiana, or OMSC, based in Elkhart. That lawsuit also names the company's Fort Wayne malpractice insurance carrier.Three local people died as a result of receiving the tainted solution, the lawsuit alleges.

Court documents outline the results of FDA and other investigations into NECC's practices. The company closed soon after news emerged about the tainted solution. Meanwhile, insurance companies involved in similar cases against OSMC and South Bend Clinic (and at least three other Indiana clinics) are disputing whether the clinics' alleged involvement in the tainted injections constitute medical malpractice or "merely negligence in the acquisition of supplies, as opposed to medical malpractice in the form of actual provision of medical services to a patient," one court document explains. That question would affect which insurance carriers, and which policies, are involved.

Read more here.