Eight New Victims Seek Late Meningitis Claims Approval

By Walter F. Roche Jr.

Eight additional victims of the 2012 12 fungal meningitis outbreak are seeking court approval for claims filed well after a 2014 deadline.
The request was submitted late last week in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Boston on behalf of victims who initially did not have attorneys to represent them.
Three of the late filers are from Tennessee while others are from Indiana and Michigan. Two of the Tennessee claimants were injected with a tainted steroid at a Nashville outpatient clinic, while the third was treated at a Crossville facility.
Five of the eight already have submitted claims, while the remaining three are seeking an extension to  file the necessary paperwork.
According to the filing all eight had filed claims after the deadline, had their claims denied and then filed appeals under a process approved by a bankruptcy judge.
The eight are seeking a share of some $200 million placed in a trust fund during the bankruptcy of the New England Compounding Center, the now defunct firm  blamed for the outbreak which sickened 778 patients across the country, killing 76 of them.
Tennessee,  Indiana and Michigan were three of the hardest hit states, according to outbreak data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Paul D. Moore, who served as trustee in the NECC bankruptcy, filed notice today stating he has no objections to the requests.
Filing the motion for the late filers was Annika Martin of the law firm of Lieff Cabraser Heimann and Bernstein. She stated that she was acting not as the attorney for the late filers, but as the court appointed representative of victims without attorneys.
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