A plaintiff from Alabama filed a new hernia mesh lawsuit claiming that a Physiomesh composite device caused her serious health problems. The list of litigations filed in the last year against the various medical device manufacturers never stops growing, and the woman’s one is just the last one among thousands.
Plaintiff Patricia S. and her husband Charles S. now sued Ethicon seeking compensation for all the pain and suffering she had to endure (Case No. 5:17-cv-02016 in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama). After being implanted with the mesh to repair a hernia, the allegedly defective device caused her serious complications, forcing her to undergo additional invasive medical treatments.
Her severe complications included infection, foreign body response, chronic inflammation and adhesions to internal organs. The woman had to be re-operated after her hernia reopened and her abdominal tissues got severely damaged. Her lawyers now sued the manufacturer over negligent design, development and marketing of an unsafe device that was approved in 2010 through the 510(k) fast-track approval program. The couple also alleged that Ethicon failed to warn the public about the possible dangers of the defective product as well as negligently and fraudulently misrepresenting it.
Many pelvic repair systems have already been recalled from the market after, in 2016, the FDA received an alarmingly high number of adverse event reports. The various companies who produced the meshes, however, faced tens of thousands of lawsuits filed by patients all across the country. Countless victims had, in fact, to deal with the grievous consequences of being implanted with one of those devices and chose to seek compensation in court.
Several Multidistrict Litigations have been consolidated in different districts. MDLs No. 2187, 2325 and 236 against American Medical Systems Inc., Boston Scientific Corp. and C.R. Bard count at least 25,000 cases. The one filed by the Alabama plaintiff has been centralized in the MDL No. 2327 against Ethicon Inc., together with 32,000 other suits in the United States District Court Southern District of West Virginia.
