Ethicon Manages To Toss Defective Pelvic Mesh Claims

Ethicon Manages To Toss Defective Pelvic Mesh Claims

Introduction

On April 17,  a Philadelphia jury ruled in favor of a Johnson & Johnson unit, tossing claims made by a woman that the company's defectively designed pelvic mesh implant caused her severe pain and vaginal complications.

Though the jury agreed that J&J's subsidiary Ethicon Inc. was negligent in designing and marketing its TVT-Secur mesh implant, the jury determined that negligence was not the reason for the injuries the Philadelphia-area resident suffered from the device. The plaintiff was implanted with the TVT-Secur mesh in 2008 to treat her stress urinary incontinence. However, she experienced painful side-effects, and her condition seemed to worsen over the years. In her lawsuit, she asserted that Ethicon rushed the product to the market in 2006, without adequate clinical testing. The mesh implant was pulled from the market in 2012. Defendants argued that the woman's injuries were not linked to the mesh implant and that the product cannot be regarded as defective merely because it failed to cure her incontinence. The jury returned a defense verdict after about six hours of deliberation, ending the three-and-half-week trial.

Ethicon pelvic mesh lawsuits are consolidated as a part of a multidistrict litigation (MDL No. 2327; In Re: Ethicon, Inc., Pelvic Repair System Products Liability Litigation) before U.S. District Judge Joseph R. Goodwin in the Southern District of West Virginia.