A plaintiff from Virginia, Scott H., just filed a new hernia mesh lawsuit against Ethicon Inc. after suffering serious complications and injuries. The man sued the manufacturer after the Physiomesh device he was implanted with caused him serious side effects including chronic pain. He claims that the companies designed a defective product, knew about the danger of potential damage, and were negligent in providing adequate warns to doctors and patients.
Mr. H. was implanted with a pelvic repair system on January 2013, after he was diagnosed with an umbilical hernia. The device was inserted surgically inside his abdomen to repair the damaged muscles and contain the herniated tissues. However, just one year after the operation, he started suffering from several side effects that forced him to undergo revision surgery in March 2014. During the new intervention, surgeons found that Scott that the mesh detached from the area where it was supposed to stay, failed to prevent a new hernia, and even caused several organ adhesions.
According to his attorneys, the plastic materials which constitute the device contribute to the chronic inflammation response responsible for the pain he endures. After requiring intense hospital treatment that forced him to face substantial medical expenses, the man kept suffering from additional complications over the course of the subsequent years. Other patients reported similar problems, with infections, adhesions and reoperations occurring more often that they are supposed to.
Johnson & Johnson and subsidiary Ethicon Inc. are facing a large number of legal actions filed by tens of thousands of plaintiffs across the whole country. Most pelvic repair lawsuits allege that these devices are substantially more dangerous than advertised, and that the companies that manufacture them failed to warn the public about the serious health risks. Back in 2010, Christopher Thorpe was awarded a $1.5 million compensation by a jury in the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island after a Kugel surgical mesh marketed by Davol Inc. and C.R. Bard Inc. broke inside its abdomen.
Because of the amount of cases filed became too large, the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigations (JPML) centralized them in several different MDLs to speed up the proceedings. All the legal actions pursued against Ethicon and J&J have been consolidated in the MDL No. 2327 overseen by Judge Joseph R. Goodwin in the United States District Court Southern District of West Virginia. Many other litigations are currently coordinated against Boston Scientific Corp., C.R. Bard. and American Medical Systems Inc.
