Lawyers Can’t Drop Client for Not Taking Benicar Settlement

Wagstaff & Cartmell LLP must continue litigating its client’s claims that blood pressure medication Benicar causes gastrointestinal problems even after he refused to join a global settlement.

“If counsel is now ‘scared off’ by the prospect of paying for trial, counsel should not have undertaken the representation of plaintiff in the first instance,” Magistrate Judge Joel Schneider wrote Aug. 15 for the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey.

In 2017, drugmaker Daiichi Sankyo Inc. agreed to pay $300 million to resolve patient injury claims over its Benicar, BenicarHCT, Azor, and Tribenzor blood pressure treatments.

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