Zostavax (Zoster Vaccine Live)

The Zostavax docket involves a live-attenuated shingles vaccine that plaintiffs allege caused the very disease it was meant to prevent — herpes zoster infection and its complications, most notably vision loss from zoster ophthalmicus, along with other disseminated infection injuries — in patients who received the vaccine rather than the inert, non-live alternative later brought to market. With just over a hundred actions pending roughly eight years after centralization, this is a mid-sized, mature docket rather than a mass-volume one.

Funding here should be underwritten claim-by-claim against injury severity: permanent or significant vision loss represents a materially different claim than a resolved, self-limiting shingles outbreak, and the strength of the causal record — timing between vaccination and onset, viral strain confirmation where available, and the treating ophthalmologist's or specialist's findings — drives both liability strength and expected value more than any docket-wide characteristic. A vaccine-injury products claim also carries distinct procedural considerations relative to a device or drug mass tort, and funders should confirm how a given claim is postured — including whether it proceeds solely as a civil products-liability action — before pricing.

Medical-lien exposure tracks the underlying treatment: ophthalmologic care and, in more severe disseminated-infection cases, hospitalization can generate liens that should be sized against expected recovery early in any funding conversation. Given the docket's maturity, comparable claims have generally already been evaluated, which supports more informed pricing than would be available earlier in the litigation's life, and it is worth confirming how recently a comparable claim was evaluated before relying on it as a benchmark. Criterica Capital's mass tort finance product is structured to evaluate exactly this kind of individualized, severity-driven drug and vaccine injury claim.

For firms assessing where this litigation stands procedurally, a structural brief from Criterica Intelligence is available alongside any funding discussion, and can help frame claim-by-claim expectations before capital is committed.

Pre-settlement funding is a non-recourse purchase of a portion of the proceeds of a pending legal claim — not a loan. If the case does not result in a recovery, nothing is owed. Rates, fees, and repayment terms are disclosed in full in the funding agreement, which the applicant’s attorney reviews before signing. Availability and terms vary by state.