Multiple class-action lawsuits filed in courts across the country against Elanco Animal Health Inc. and Bayer LLC over the Seresto flea and tick collar will be federally consolidated into one lawsuit in Illinois.
The U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML) ordered coordinated discovery and pretrial proceedings to start in the Northern District of Illinois despite calls by defendants to be allowed to litigate individual cases separately.
The panel of judges didn’t agree with the defendants’ arguments that the cases do not share enough similarities and that it was premature to combine them.
“This litigation now encompasses sixteen related actions pending in ten districts, which allege similar, if not identical, claims and involve overlapping putative classes,” the JPML wrote.
“Defendants have not pointed to any concrete potential for coordination or consolidation of these actions. Given the number of parties and counsel, as well as the wide geographic distribution of the actions, centralization is the most practicable means of coordinating the pretrial proceedings in this litigation.”
Seresto collars linked to over 1600 pet deaths
Pet owners allege that the collars were misleadingly advertised as safe but contain toxic pesticides that can potentially harm pets and humans alike.
The first class action over the Seresto collar was filed by pet owners on March 22 this year following an investigation published by reporters at USA Today that revealed that the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had received thousands of complaints from pet owners that questioned the safety of the popular Seresto flea and tick collar.
Since the collar was introduced in the market in 2012, EPA has received over 1650 reports of pet deaths and over 75000 combined complaints of harm caused to pets and their owners allegedly linked to the collar.
A US Congressional subcommittee called for the recall of the collar
In March, a US Congressional subcommittee called for the voluntary recall of the collars. Furthermore, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Illinois), chairman of the subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy, sent a letter to Elanco and asked the company to temporarily remove the collars from the shelves and issue refunds to buyers.
But Elanco has stood by the safety of its product and declined to take it off the market. The Seresto collars are one of the top-selling flea and tick collars in the country.