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By Julie Steenhuysen

CHICAGO (Reuters) – A Chicago law firm on Tuesday filed a US lawsuit against Baxter International Inc. on behalf of patients with kidney diseases treated with what the lawyers called "potentially deadly" dialysis products.

The firm of Kenneth B. Moll & Associates Ltd., based in Chicago, said it filed the suit in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois, seeking class action status.

The suit, filed on behalf of all patients globally who have died using Baxter's dialysis products, also named Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing Co., the producer of a fluid used to check the filters for leaks. Officials at St. Paul, Minnesota-based 3M were not immediately available for comment.

Baxter said last week that the fluid, perfluorohydrocarbon, may have played a role in some of the deaths. The suit is the first filed against Illinois-based health care giant Baxter following its recall on October 18 of its A and AF series dialysis filters, or dialyzers.

The A and AF series dialyzers were part of Baxter's acquisition of Althin Medical AB in March 2000. Another line of filters, called AX, was discontinued in February.

The lawsuit seeks unspecified compensation for those injured and those who died from Baxter's dialyzers. The law firm said 56 people worldwide died following use of the filters, but two deaths were found not to have been linked with the equipment.

Attorney Kenneth Moll, who filed the suit, said he believes the number of deaths could be much higher. Moll has participated in other class action suits, including ones related to breast implants, the "fen-phen" diet drugs and Bayer's Baycol.

"One of the driving forces of this lawsuit was to protect foreign consumers as well as American consumers of this product," Moll told Reuters in an interview. He said he has received inquiries about the suit from a number of attorneys, including several in Croatia.

"We were fully expecting that lawsuits would be filed. We don't comment on any details about litigation,'' said Lisa Scheff, a spokeswoman for Baxter.

Last week, health officials in Spain threatened legal action against Baxter, alleging the company concealed information during Spain's investigation into concerns that Baxter's products were killing kidney patients.

Baxter has said it has cooperated with all investigations and has said that in many cases it has not received adequate clinical information to complete its investigations.

In addition to the October recall, Baxter on November 5 said it planned to stop making the filters, which were produced at its plant in Ronneby, Sweden. Baxter also said it would take a fourth-quarter charge of up to $150 million to cover discontinuing the product line, litigation and other costs.

In the United States, a judge must rule on whether cases can be consolidated and receive class-action status. Moll believes that if the class is certified, it might include up to 900,000 plaintiffs.

According to the suit, Baxter manufactured 3 million dialyzers in 2000. The law firm estimates that 30% of those, or about 900,000, were part of Baxter's recall.

However, Baxter said last week that fewer than 10% of the recalled series A and AF dialyzers were exposed to perfluorohydrocarbon. By those calculations, the total class would be fewer than 90,000.

Moll said the suit was filed on behalf of Calvin Loverling Jr., son of Calvin Loverling, a New Jersey resident who died on March 15 after using a Baxter series A dialyzer, according to Moll.

A spokeswoman for the US Food and Drug Administration, which is investigating the deaths, said she was not aware of any reported deaths from New Jersey linked to the Baxter dialyzers.

Moll said that's not surprising. "According to the inquiries we've gotten, we believe the total amount of deaths will be higher than the reported number," he said, adding that he intends to inform the FDA of Loverling's case.

Baxter's shares were off 66 cents, or 1.37%, at $49.01 in afternoon trade on the New York Stock Exchange, after earlier dipping to as low as $48.75.