If you live in Illinois, used Depo-Provera long-term, and were later diagnosed with a meningioma, you may be able to join the Depo-Provera lawsuit consolidated in federal court in Florida, where Pfizer and plaintiffs’ lead counsel reached a tentative global settlement in June 2026. Illinois’s two-year statute of limitations applies, but the state’s discovery rule can push the start of that clock to the date you reasonably connected your diagnosis to the drug.
Who Can File a Depo-Provera Claim
The eligibility criteria taking shape through the litigation are specific. A potential claimant generally needs to show three things:
- Use of brand-name Depo-Provera, Depo-SubQ Provera 104, or an authorized generic version for at least one year, which typically means more than four injections.
- A subsequent diagnosis of an intracranial meningioma.
- Surgery or radiation to treat the tumor, either completed or scheduled.
Users of non-authorized generic versions and people whose meningioma predated their Depo-Provera use are generally excluded. Pfizer has conceded that current, prolonged use can cause a pre-existing benign meningioma to grow large enough to be diagnosed, but it disputes claims tied to a single injection or to risk persisting more than two years after the last dose.
The Illinois Filing Deadline
Illinois gives you two years to file a product-liability or personal injury claim. For a drug injury that surfaces long after exposure, the practical question is when those two years start.
Under Illinois’s discovery rule, the clock may begin not on the date of your last injection but on the date you discovered, or reasonably should have discovered, the connection between Depo-Provera and your meningioma diagnosis. That distinction matters here because U.S. product labels did not warn of meningioma risk until December 2025, when the FDA approved Pfizer’s amended request to add the warning. European regulators had moved earlier: the European Medicines Agency’s safety committee adopted recommendations in September 2024 listing meningioma as a risk associated with prolonged use, and Canada updated its warnings around the same time. The FDA had rejected Pfizer’s first request in November 2024 before approving the resubmitted version.
The December 2025 U.S. label change may be relevant in establishing when the discovery period began for many Illinois claimants, but discovery-rule questions are fact-specific. If your diagnosis is older, do not assume you are out of time without checking; if it is recent, do not assume you have years to spare.
How Illinois Law Shapes a Claim
Several features of Illinois law affect what a claim looks like and what it can recover.
Illinois follows a modified comparative fault system: a plaintiff is barred from recovery only if their own fault exceeds 50%. The state applies strict liability for product defect claims. For failure-to-warn claims involving prescription drugs, Illinois recognizes the learned intermediary doctrine, meaning the manufacturer’s duty to warn runs primarily to the prescribing physician rather than directly to the patient. That framing matters in Depo-Provera cases, where the central allegation is that Pfizer failed to warn U.S. prescribers of meningioma risk it had disclosed to regulators abroad.
Illinois has no statutory caps on damages. The state supreme court has struck down previous legislative attempts to cap pain and suffering awards as unconstitutional. Recoverable damages can include medical expenses, lost income, pain and suffering, loss of enjoyment of life, and disfigurement. A spouse may bring a claim for loss of consortium. Punitive damages are available where gross negligence is established.
Where the Case Stands
Federal Depo-Provera cases are consolidated in MDL No. 3140, In re: Depo-Provera (Depot Medroxyprogesterone Acetate) Products Liability Litigation, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida before Judge M. Casey Rodgers. The consolidation began in February 2025 with roughly 27 cases and grew to more than 5,500 federal cases by June 2026, with additional parallel filings in state courts including Illinois, Delaware, New York, and California. An Illinois resident who files in federal court has the case transferred to MDL 3140 for pretrial proceedings regardless of where it was originally filed. As of early 2026, only a small number of Depo-Provera cases had been filed in Illinois state court; the vast majority of claims nationwide were proceeding through the federal MDL.
On June 15, 2026, Judge Rodgers indicated in a court order that the parties had “reached an agreement under which all Plaintiffs with cases pending in this MDL who meet the eligibility criteria agreed to by the Parties will have an opportunity to resolve their claims.” The agreement is between plaintiffs’ lead counsel and defendants Pfizer Inc., Pharmacia LLC, and Pharmacia & Upjohn Co. LLC. Specific terms, including eligibility requirements and compensation tiers, are being finalized and have not been publicly released. No bellwether trials or jury verdicts had occurred before the settlement announcement.
The settlement will not cover every case. Plaintiffs who do not meet the eligibility criteria, or who choose not to participate, will continue through the litigation. Judge Rodgers rescheduled a Rule 702 expert hearing on general causation to July 27, 2026, in Pensacola, and Pfizer’s federal preemption defense — based on the FDA’s original 2024 rejection of the meningioma warning — remains under review, with any ruling to apply to every case in the MDL.
The Underlying Claim
The lawsuits center on meningioma, the most common type of brain tumor. Meningiomas grow in the tissue layers covering the brain and spinal cord. About 90% are benign, but even noncancerous meningiomas can press on the brain and cause headaches, seizures, vision changes, hearing loss, memory problems, and muscle weakness. Treatment often requires a craniotomy, and some patients need follow-up radiation. Lasting complications can include seizures, memory loss, and cognitive difficulties.
Two studies form the scientific backbone of the litigation. A French national case-control study published in The BMJ in March 2024 analyzed 18,061 women who underwent brain surgery for meningioma against more than 90,000 matched controls, and found that women who used injectable medroxyprogesterone acetate had 5.55 times the odds of developing a meningioma requiring surgery compared to non-users; for women who used the drug a year or longer, the odds ratio was 5.62. A September 2025 study in JAMA Neurology using a large U.S. database of roughly 88,000 matched patients found a relative risk of 2.43, with the highest risk among patients who had used the drug more than four years or who started after age 31.
Plaintiffs allege Pfizer and related defendants knew or should have known about the risk for years but failed to update U.S. labels while equivalent labels abroad carried warnings. Related claims include negligent failure to test, fraudulent concealment, design defect (arguing the lower-dose Depo-SubQ Provera 104 was a safer alternative), and general negligence. Plaintiffs also contend the defendants could have updated the label on their own through the FDA’s “Changes Being Effected” supplement, which allows safety-related label changes without prior agency approval.
What to Do Next
If you used Depo-Provera long-term and have been diagnosed with a meningioma, gather your prescription and injection records, your diagnosis and treatment records, and any correspondence about the diagnosis. Because the Illinois two-year clock may already be running from the point you connected the drug to your diagnosis, and because settlement eligibility is being defined now, the window to act is narrower than the settlement announcement suggests.