Jury Awards $3M in The Third Cook IVC Filter Bellwether

Jury Awards $3M in The Third Cook IVC Filter Bellwether

Introduction

An Indiana federal jury awarded $3 million in the third bellwether case involving Cook Medical's Inferior Vena Cava (IVC) filter injuries, finding that the company's product was the reason for a woman's complications.

The award was granted to the plaintiff on Friday, February 1, as the jury found Celect vein filter broke and ruptured her internal organs requiring her to undergo multiple surgeries to get the filter removed. The verdict solely covered liability and compensatory damages; The plaintiff's attorney told the parties are yet to arrive on an agreed punitive damages amount. In 2009, the Celect model of the IVC filter was implanted during a spinal-fusion surgery. According to the court records, she got the filter removed in October 2015, as she started experiencing severe complications owing to the filter breakage and migration. The plaintiff sued Cook Medical and other associates claiming strict liability and negligent failure to warn, strict liability and negligent design defect, negligent manufacturing, negligence per se, breach of warranty, and loss of consortium. Cook Medical moved for summary judgment on all claims, but U. S. District Judge Richard L. Young tossed most of them, and stated the plaintiff was right in claiming that lack of adequate warnings caused her harm before and after surgeries. The plaintiff failed to respond to the breach of warranty, negligent manufacturing and loss of consortium claims, so the judge granted summary judgment for those bids. This is the third bellwether case in the MDL after, the first one ended in a defense verdict, and the second bellwether case was dismissed in March 2018 as time-barred.

Several Cook IVC filter lawsuits are centralized since October 2014 under MDL No. 2570 (IN RE: Cook Medical, Inc., IVC Filters Marketing, Sales Practices, and Products Liability Litigation), in the Southern District of Indiana.