Plaintiffs’ attorney Aaron Siri said individuals who received a whooping cough vaccine in New York after viewing certain advertisements may be eligible for compensation under a class action settlement.
“If you got the whooping cough vaccine (aka, Tdap or pertussis vaccine) in NY between May 20, 2016 and May 20, 2020, and were vaccinated to protect others after viewing an advertisement, you may be eligible to receive a payment,” Siri wrote in a post on X, linking to the settlement website.
Siri is managing partner of Siri & Glimstad LLP and “represented Robert F. Kennedy Jr. during his presidential campaign,” Fortune reported in December 2024. That report also said Siri helped Kennedy interview candidates to work at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The settlement stems from claims that a marketing campaign suggested the vaccine could help prevent transmission of pertussis to others. The agreement provides payments to eligible individuals but does not require any changes to the vaccine itself, its labeling, or its regulatory status. The vaccine remains approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use in preventing disease in the person receiving it.
Individuals who submit claims may receive modest compensation depending on documentation, while the case resolves allegations related to advertising rather than product safety or efficacy. The agreement does not mandate additional studies, manufacturing changes, or updates to federal approval. Court filings indicate plaintiffs’ attorneys may seek fees from the settlement fund, consistent with contingency fee arrangements commonly used in class action litigation.
Such arrangements typically allocate a percentage of any recovery to attorneys, often around one-third to 40% in many civil cases, according to the American Bar Association.
The structure of the agreement reflects broader concerns raised by policy analysts about the role of litigation in shaping product safety and public health outcomes.
As previously reported by Patient Daily, a national taxpayer advocate said efforts to improve the safety of products such as vaccines and medicines through litigation can have unintended consequences.
“Litigation certainly has a role to play in ensuring that products are not defective, and companies keep their word. However, what we’re seeing now is billion-dollar verdicts grounded in the flimsiest evidence,” said Ross Marchand, executive director of the Taxpayers Protection Alliance.
Large product-liability settlements have, in some cases, not resulted in products being removed from the market or significantly altered. One example is litigation involving glyphosate-based herbicides.
In 2020, Monsanto, now owned by Bayer, announced it would pay $11 billion to resolve claims that its glyphosate weedkiller, branded as Roundup, caused harm.
Seven years later, however, glyphosate remains widely used, reported Business Daily. More than 90 percent of U.S. farmers still use it, applying hundreds of millions of pounds annually.
“If you ban glyphosate overnight or if you got rid of it, or if somebody else cut off our supply, it would destroy the American food system,” said Kennedy, who previously worked on litigation related to the product.
Kennedy told podcaster Joe Rogan that the $11 billion settlement did not change the product’s role in agriculture, describing glyphosate as a “foundational pesticide of our food production system.”
Marchand said that, instead of improving product safety, litigation often results in “the opposite because runaway legal costs deter innovation.”
