Depo-Provera Meningioma Lawsuit: Are West Virginia Patients Eligible?

A woman in Charleston goes in for an MRI because the headaches will not quit. The scan finds a meningioma, a tumor growing in the membranes that wrap the brain. Her neurosurgeon talks about size, location, and whether to operate. Nobody in the room mentions the contraceptive injection she received every twelve weeks for nine years.

That connection is now the subject of more than 6,000 federal lawsuits against Pfizer, and one date matters more than any other. November 30, 2026 is the deadline to register for the settlement program in the federal Depo-Provera litigation.

Eligibility runs through two gates. The first is the settlement program’s own criteria, applied by a court-appointed administrator. The second is West Virginia’s filing deadline, which can close a claim before anyone reaches the first gate.

Who Qualifies for a Depo-Provera Meningioma Claim in West Virginia?

Eligibility generally turns on three facts: documented use of an injectable medroxyprogesterone acetate product, a meningioma diagnosis confirmed by imaging or pathology, and a diagnosis that falls within the timing and filing windows the MDL court recognizes. West Virginia residency is not required, and where a woman received her injections matters more than where she lives now.

The court groups the covered products under one term, MPA Products:

• Depo-Provera CI, the 150 mg intramuscular injection given every three months
• Depo-SubQ Provera 104, the 104 mg subcutaneous version
• Authorized generic versions of either injection

Two groups have already been carved out. Limitations Plaintiffs are excluded because of when they filed suit. Latency Plaintiffs are excluded because of the gap between the last injection and the diagnosis. BrownGreer PLC, the court-appointed settlement administrator, makes those calls, not a law firm.

Why the drug was prescribed changes nothing: women given it for endometriosis or heavy bleeding stand where contraceptive users stand.

What Is the November 30 Settlement Registration Deadline?

Judge M. Casey Rodgers has been informed that claimants must register to participate in the Depo-Provera Settlement Program by November 30, 2026. The agreement is dated July 22, 2026 and covers a substantial percentage of the roughly 6,289 cases pending in MDL 3140. Terms and payout amounts remain undisclosed.

Filings in MDL No. 3140 record how fast the machinery came together:

• August 5, 2026 — BrownGreer PLC appointed settlement administrator
• August 10, 2026 — Case Management Order No. 14 issued for cases outside the program
• September 4, 2026 — qualified settlement fund, lien resolution, and allocation masters appointed

What has not been published is the part every woman wants to know. There is no payout formula, no tier structure, no average, no aggregate figure, and any number circulating online is an estimate. The agreement carries no admission of liability and does not reach state court claims.

Why Are Women Suing Pfizer Over Depo-Provera?

The claims allege Pfizer knew of a meningioma signal and failed to warn American women. Pfizer asked the FDA to add a meningioma warning in February 2024. The agency denied it. Pfizer amended and resubmitted in June 2025, and the FDA approved the warning in December 2025.

Pfizer has said in court filings that it became aware of a possible meningioma link in 2023. Its February 2024 application asked the FDA to warn across medroxyprogesterone-containing products. The agency rejected it as too broad. Sixteen months later, a narrower request covering only the two injections was approved.

The label now states that meningiomas have been reported “following repeated administration of medroxyprogesterone acetate, primarily with long-term use.” Prescribers are told to monitor patients and discontinue if a meningioma is diagnosed. It is not a boxed warning.

European regulators went further. Under guidance agreed with the European Medicines Agency, high-dose medroxyprogesterone acetate is contraindicated for patients with a meningioma or a history of one. That distance between the evidence and the warning is the heart of the claim.

What Does the Research Actually Show About Depo-Provera and Meningioma?

A 2024 BMJ case-control study of 18,061 women who had meningioma surgery found injectable medroxyprogesterone acetate carried an odds ratio of 5.55 compared with matched controls. The relative increase is large, but the absolute number of exposed women in the study was small: nine cases and eleven controls.

French researchers identified every woman who had intracranial surgery for meningioma between 2009 and 2018, matching each to five controls of the same birth year and region. The analysis, published in The BMJ in March 2024, covered 108,366 women.

The denominators explain the caution that belongs with that figure. Those exposures sat inside groups of 18,061 and 90,305, which is why the confidence interval runs from 2.27 all the way out to 13.56. A range that wide signals a real association measured imprecisely.

The same study found no excess risk with levonorgestrel intrauterine devices, which is part of what makes the positive result credible. A United States analysis in JAMA Neurology in September 2025 reported a smaller but consistent association.

None of that proves causation in an individual woman, and most women who received the injection will never develop a meningioma. Roughly 39,000 are diagnosed each year in this country, most benign. A population-level signal is still enough to trigger a duty to warn.

How Long Does a West Virginia Woman Have to File a Depo-Provera Lawsuit?

West Virginia Code § 55-2-12(b) gives two years for personal injury claims. The clock does not necessarily start at diagnosis. Under the discovery rule, it starts when a woman knew, or reasonably should have known, that her meningioma might be connected to the injections she received.

Accrual is the operative word in West Virginia Code § 55-2-12, and it is where these cases are won or lost. Our Supreme Court of Appeals set out a five-step limitations analysis in Dunn v. Rockwell, 225 W. Va. 43, 689 S.E.2d 255 (2009), and the third step decides most Depo-Provera claims.

The governing test, from Gaither v. City Hospital, Inc., 199 W. Va. 706, 487 S.E.2d 901 (1997), is objective. A woman is charged with the factual basis for a claim, not the legal one: injury, duty, and breach.

The federal court has drawn its own line at March 27, 2024, the date the BMJ study published. Any woman filing now who alleges a meningioma diagnosed earlier must certify why her claim is not time-barred and state under oath when she first connected the tumor to the injection.

Before March 2024 there was no meningioma warning on the American label and little reason for a woman in Huntington or Beckley to link a brain tumor to a contraceptive she stopped years earlier. A 2019 diagnosis is not automatically a dead claim.

Three deadlines matter here:

• Personal injury — two years from accrual, under § 55-2-12(b)
• Wrongful death — two years from the date of death, under § 55-7-6
• Settlement registration — November 30, 2026

How Does West Virginia’s Learned Intermediary Law Affect These Claims?

West Virginia Code § 55-7-30 lets a drug maker satisfy its duty to warn by warning the prescribing provider rather than the patient. The defense has a limit written into it: the manufacturer must have supplied reasonable warnings about foreseeable risks. Before December 2025, the Depo-Provera label carried no meningioma warning.

West Virginia was the last state to reject the learned intermediary doctrine. In State ex rel. Johnson & Johnson Corp. v. Karl, 647 S.E.2d 899 (W. Va. 2007), the Supreme Court of Appeals held that a drug manufacturer owed consumers the same duty to warn as any other manufacturer. The Legislature reversed that in 2016, adding West Virginia Code § 55-7-30 to the code.

The statute grants no immunity. A manufacturer escapes liability only where it supplied reasonable warnings to prescribers about foreseeable risks; liability survives where it acted unreasonably and that failure caused the injury.

That sets up the question a West Virginia case must answer. The health department nurse in Kanawha County, the OB-GYN in Morgantown, the clinic staff in Parkersburg: what was any of them told? A prescriber cannot relay a warning that does not exist.

Whether that gap defeats the defense is unresolved. Pfizer says its labeling complied with what the FDA permitted, which also anchors its federal preemption motion, argued and awaiting a ruling.

Where Would a West Virginia Depo-Provera Case Be Filed?

Federal Depo-Provera claims are consolidated in MDL No. 3140 before Judge M. Casey Rodgers in the Northern District of Florida, Pensacola Division. Pretrial Order No. 10 permits direct filing into the MDL, so a West Virginia woman’s case does not have to start in Charleston, Huntington, or Wheeling.

An MDL is not a class action, and the difference is not academic. One class judgment binds everyone inside the class; in multidistrict litigation each woman keeps her own case and her own recovery. The Judicial Panel centralized these cases on February 7, 2025 for pretrial handling only. Three consequences follow:

• Direct filing places a case on the MDL docket without an intermediate filing in a West Virginia federal court.
• Choice of law still matters. Women who continue in litigation must identify which state’s law governs, and for a woman injected in West Virginia, that points home.
• State court mass torts here can be referred to the Mass Litigation Panel under Trial Court Rule 26, a mechanism with no federal equivalent.

What Happens If You Are Not Eligible for the Settlement Program?

Case Management Order No. 14 creates a separate track for women the Settlement Administrator finds ineligible. Those claims continue as individual lawsuits with heavier obligations: preservation notices, a sworn Plaintiff Fact Sheet, complete medical records, a case-specific causation expert report, and mandatory mediation before Magistrate Judge Hope Cannon.

The order calls these women Litigating Plaintiffs and puts them on a clock.

1. Within 60 days of the ineligibility finding, counsel must send certified-mail preservation notices to every provider who treated her or prescribed the injection.
2. Within 90 days, she must produce initial disclosures, a verified Plaintiff Fact Sheet, proof of use and injury, and complete meningioma-related records.
3. Also within 90 days, an expert report attributing her meningioma to the product and ruling out other causes. Template reports will be stricken.
4. Within 90 days of finishing those obligations, mediation begins before the magistrate judge and runs at least 90 days more.

Failure to comply draws a 30-day cure period, then a show cause order, then dismissal with prejudice. Litigating Plaintiffs are also expected to appear in person in Pensacola. An ineligible claim is not worthless, but continuing costs real work.

What Medical Records Does a Depo-Provera Claim Require?

Two categories carry the case: proof of use and proof of injury. Proof of use means pharmacy records, clinic charts, or immunization-style injection logs showing the dates of each shot. Proof of injury means the MRI or CT report, pathology if surgery occurred, and the neurosurgery or radiation records.

Proof of use is where West Virginia claims get complicated. Many women here received the injection at a county health department, a Title X clinic, or a Medicaid-funded provider rather than a private OB-GYN office. Those records sit with a public agency and need a separate request. Worth gathering now:

• Injection dates and locations, including the first and last dose
• Pharmacy or clinic billing records and benefits statements
• The MRI or CT report identifying the meningioma, plus operative and pathology reports if it was resected
• Radiation records, including Gamma Knife treatment
• Documentation of lasting effects such as vision loss, seizures, or cognitive difficulty

Treatment records commonly trace back to the WVU Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute in Morgantown, whose skull base program treats meningioma, or to CAMC Neurosurgery on Morris Street in Charleston. A claim built without surgery is still a claim, because surveillance generates imaging. Every year of delay makes proof of use harder to assemble.

What Should West Virginia Women Still Using Depo-Provera Do?

No woman should stop Depo-Provera on her own. Stopping without a replacement method risks unintended pregnancy, and the label directs prescribers to monitor rather than to discontinue automatically. The right step is a conversation with the provider who administers the injection about whether continuing still makes sense.

That conversation goes better with specifics: how long you have been receiving the injection, why it was prescribed, and whether you have had symptoms the label tells prescribers to watch for. Persistent or worsening headache. Vision or hearing changes. Numbness on one side. Seizures.

For most women, the benefit will still outweigh a small absolute risk. For some, an alternative will make better sense. That judgment belongs to a clinician who knows the patient’s history. The legal question sits apart, and a woman already diagnosed has a claim worth evaluating.

Talk With a West Virginia Product Liability Attorney

Powell & Majestro, P.L.L.C. has represented West Virginia residents from our Charleston office since 2002. Anthony J. Majestro, the firm’s managing member, concentrates his practice on complex litigation over defective products, including pharmaceutical claims involving hormone replacement drugs, Vioxx, and Rezulin.

If you received Depo-Provera or a generic medroxyprogesterone injection and were later diagnosed with a meningioma, we can review your records and tell you whether the November 30, 2026 deadline applies to you.

Call (304) 346-2889 or reach us through our online contact form. We handle these claims on a contingency fee basis. The consultation is free, and there are no fees unless we recover compensation on your behalf.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the Depo-Provera litigation a class action?

No. It is multidistrict litigation, which coordinates pretrial proceedings while leaving each case separate. Every woman keeps her own claim and her own recovery, and nothing in it binds her to an outcome negotiated for another.

What if I received a generic version of the injection?

Authorized generic versions are covered alongside the brand-name formulations. Eligibility turns on documented use of an injectable medroxyprogesterone acetate product and a confirmed meningioma diagnosis, not the name on the vial.

My meningioma was found years ago and I never had surgery. Does that matter?

Surgery is not a requirement. Tumors treated with radiation or watched through surveillance still generate the imaging and records a claim is built on. The age of the diagnosis raises a separate timing question under West Virginia’s discovery rule.

Do I have to travel to Florida for my case?

Not to file. Cases are placed directly onto the federal docket from West Virginia. Women who stay in active litigation after falling outside the settlement program must attend a status conference in Pensacola, but that comes much later.

What does it cost to have my situation reviewed?

Nothing. We review these claims at no charge and handle them on contingency, so fees come out of a recovery rather than your pocket. If there is no recovery, there is no fee.