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Hammons December 22
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J&J Hit With $7 Million Punitive-Damage Award Over Mesh
Dec 22, 2015 | Bloomberg
By Jef Feeley
Johnson & Johnson must pay $7 million in punitive damages to a woman who blamed company’s vaginal-mesh implants for damaging her bladder, jury rules in first case over medical device to be tried in Pennsylvania. -
Philadelphia jury awards woman $12.5 million in damages from Johnson & Johnson in vaginal mesh implant case
Dec 22, 2015 | Philadelphia Inquirer
By Chris Mondics
A Philadelphia jury on Tuesday awarded $12.5 in damages to a woman who alleged in a lawsuit that a vaginal mesh implant made by Johnson & Johnson caused her to have extreme pain during sex and required multiple corrective surgeries. -
J&J Tagged With $7M Punitives In Pa. Pelvic Mesh Case
Dec 22, 2015 | Law360
By Dan Packel
Jurors on Tuesday hit a Johnson & Johnson unit with $7 million in punitive damages, on top of $5.5 million in compensatory damages, in the first case over the company’s Prolift pelvic mesh product to be tried in Philadelphia’s mass tort program. -
$7M in Punitives Awarded in Pelvic Mesh Case
Dec 22, 2015 | Legal Intelligencer
By Max Mitchell
A Philadelphia jury has hit Johnson & Johnson with a $7 million punitive damages award for its conduct with regard to a pelvic mesh implant device. -
Philadelphia Jury Adds $7 Million in Punitive Damages to $5 Million Compensatory Verdict At Conclusion of Prolift Mesh Trial
Dec 22, 2015 | HarrisMartin
A Pennsylvania jury has awarded a Prolift pelvic mesh plaintiff $7 million in punitive damages in the second phase of a Prolift transvaginal mesh device trial, sources tell HarrisMartin Publishing. -
$5.5 Million Compensatory Verdict Returned In 1st Pelvic Mesh Trial In Pennsylvania
| LexisNexis
By Tom Moylan
A Pennsylvania state court jury on Dec. 21 returned a $5.5 million verdict in the first pelvic mesh case from the state’s complex litigation docket to go to trial, according to one of the plaintiff’s attorneys (Patricia L. Hammons v. Ethicon Inc., No. 130503913, Pa. Comm. Pls., Philadelphia Co.).
Traditional Media Coverage
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J&J Hit With $7 Million Punitive-Damage Award Over Mesh
Dec 22, 2015 | Bloomberg
By Jef Feeley
Note: We flagged this from the Bloomberg terminal and still expect a full article to be published.
Johnson & Johnson must pay $7 million in punitive damages to a woman who blamed company’s vaginal-mesh implants for damaging her bladder, jury rules in first case over medical device to be tried in Pennsylvania.
Tuesday’s award brings to $12 million amount J&J and its Ethicon unit have been ordered to pay Patricia Hammonds for injuries tied to Prolift mesh, used to bolster sagging organs
NOTE: Jurors in state court in Philadelphia concluded Monday that Hammonds deserved $5.5 million in compensatory damages
J&J will appeal the jury’s verdict, Matthew Johnson, spokesman for Ethicon, said in an e-mailed statement. Product was properly designed and “not the cause” of medical problems, he said.
Woman’s lawyer Adam Slater said decision to award punishment damages should send message that “the reprehensibility of J&J’s conduct is obvious and very disturbing to juries.”
J&J, based in New Brunswick, New Jersey, faces more than 20,000 lawsuits accusing Ethicon of making improperly designed vaginal inserts that damaged women’s organs and made sex painful. In June 2012, J&J voluntarily pulled four lines of mesh inserts, including the Prolift implant, off the market.
Decision to stop selling the Prolift and other mesh inserts came six months after regulators ordered J&J and more than 20 other makers of such devices to study organ damage and other health complications blamed on the products, which treat incontinence and shore up weakened pelvic muscles.
CASE: Hammonds v. Ethicon, CA No. 13053913, Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas (Philadelphia)
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Dec 22, 2015 | Philadelphia Inquirer
By Chris Mondics
A Philadelphia jury on Tuesday awarded $12.5 in damages to a woman who alleged in a lawsuit that a vaginal mesh implant made by Johnson & Johnson caused her to have extreme pain during sex and required multiple corrective surgeries.
Even after the surgeries, Patricia Hammons, a 65-year-old Walmart shelf stocker from Indiana, claimed in her lawsuit that she could no longer have sex and suffered from other health problems.
The Philadelphia Common Pleas Court awarded Hammons $5.5 million in compensatory damages for her ongoing health problems and inability to have sex. The jury also awarded her $7 million in punitive damages, a sum intended to punish Johnson & Johnson for having marketed an unsafe product.
The two-and-half week trial pitted experts for Hammons against those of health care products giant J&J, and focused on the testimony of J&J experts who worked on development of the vaginal mesh implant, known as Prolift.
In a pivotal moment for the trial, Hammons lawyers elicited damaging testimony from a product engineer for Ethicon, the J&J subsidiary that made the device. Although removal of the implants is a hugely complex surgical procedure, the engineer Scott Ciarrocca said the company had never given any thought to how to remove the mesh if it failed. In earlier testimony, a plaintiff's expert described such procedures as exceedingly difficult and tantamount to a surgical "train wreck."
Moreover, while the company knew before its product launch in 2005 that vaginal mesh implants had been associated with pain during sex, that fact was not included on the product warning label.
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J&J Tagged With $7M Punitives In Pa. Pelvic Mesh Case
Dec 22, 2015 | Law360
By Dan Packel
Jurors on Tuesday hit a Johnson & Johnson unit with $7 million in punitive damages, on top of $5.5 million in compensatory damages, in the first case over the company’s Prolift pelvic mesh product to be tried in Philadelphia’s mass tort program.
After the jurors concluded their second set of deliberations, Johnson & Johnson and its Ethicon unit immediately said that they would appeal the verdict from the three-week trial of a case brought by Indiana woman Patricia Hammons.
“We believe the evidence showed Ethicon’s Prolift pelvic organ prolapse repair kit was properly designed, Ethicon acted appropriately and responsibly in the research, development and marketing of the product, and Prolift was not the cause of the plaintiff’s continuing medical problems. We have always made patient safety a top priority and will continue to do so,” Matthew Johnson, Director of Communications of Ethicon, said in a statement.
Hammons’ May 2013 suit alleged that shards of the Prolift mesh, which was implanted between her bladder and vagina in 2009 in an effort to correct sagging of her internal organs, became implanted in her bladder. She accused Ethicon scientists and officials of overlooking negative side effects associated with Prolift and hiding the risks from her implanting surgeon.
Ultimately, ten of 12 jurors concluded that the company failed to warn her implanting surgeon of the risks of the product, and that its negligence in designing the implant resulted in her inability to have sex. They also found that the company should be subject to punitive damages.
After hearing arguments on Thursday afternoon about the appropriate size of these damages, the jurors deliberated for roughly two hours before settling on the $7 million figure on Friday.
The case is the first of 180 in Philadelphia’s mass tort program over pelvic mesh products.
“We have to take them one at a time,” Hammons’ attorney Shanin Specter said Thursday.
There are also approximately 8,000 pelvic mesh suits pending in New Jersey state court and 35,000 in federal court.
Hammons is represented by Shanin Specter, Lee Balefsky, Kila Baldwin and Michelle Tiger of Kline & Specter PC and Adam Slater of Mazie Slater Katz & Freeman LLC.
The defendants are represented by Susan Robinson of Thomas Combs & Spann PLLC, Matthew Moriarty of Tucker Ellis LLP, Molly Flynn of Drinker Biddle Reath LLP, and Tarek Ismail of Goldman Ismail Tomaselli Brennan & Baum LLP.
The case is Hammons v. Ethicon Inc. et al., case number 130503913, in the Court of Common Pleas of the State of Pennsylvania, County of Philadelphia.
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$7M in Punitives Awarded in Pelvic Mesh Case
Dec 22, 2015 | Legal Intelligencer
By Max Mitchell
A Philadelphia jury has hit Johnson & Johnson with a $7 million punitive damages award for its conduct with regard to a pelvic mesh implant device.
The punitive damages award in Hammons v. Ethicon came one day after the same jury awarded plaintiff Patricia Hammons $5.5 million in compensatory damages. Hammons had alleged the product was negligently designed, and Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Ethicon failed to properly warn health professionals about the risks of the Prolift device.
Hammons’ attorney, Shanin Specter of Kline & Specter, called the award “a great victory.”
“The jury worked very hard on the case throughout,” he said. “I hope this sends a message to Johnson & Johnson that they need to exercise care in the development and marketing of their products.”
A spokesman for Ethicon said the company plans to appeal the verdict.
“We believe the evidence showed Ethicon’s Prolift pelvic organ prolapse repair kit was properly designed, Ethicon acted appropriately and responsibly in the research, development and marketing of the product, and Prolift was not the cause of the plaintiff’s continuing medical problems. We have always made patient safety a top priority and will continue to do so,” spokesman Matthew Johnson said. “Studies demonstrated that Prolift was efficacious and had a low rate of post-operative complications when used with appropriate patient selection and proper surgical technique.”
The Hammons case was the first out of Philadelphia’s pelvic-mesh mass tort program to hit trial. Judge Mark I. Bernstein presided over the case.
According to Stanley Thompson, director of the Complex Litigation Center, there are 181 pending cases in the pelvic-mesh mass tort, with the last case being filed in October.
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Dec 22, 2015 | HarrisMartin
A Pennsylvania jury has awarded a Prolift pelvic mesh plaintiff $7 million in punitive damages in the second phase of a Prolift transvaginal mesh device trial, sources tell HarrisMartin Publishing.
The verdict was rendered on Dec. 22, one day after the jury awarded the plaintiff $5.5 million in compensatory damages following a two-week trial and one day of deliberation. Judge Mark I. Bernstein of the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas presided over the trial.
The plaintiff alleged that the product was negligently designed and that Ethicon and its parent, Johnson & Johnson, negligently failed to warn consumers and doctors of the device’s risks.
Indiana resident Patricia Hammonds, 64, alleges she sustained numerous injuries after being implanted with Ethicon’s Gynecare Prolift Pelvic Floor Repair System in 2009, which had been prescribed to treat her pelvic organ prolapse and stress urinary incontinence.
After experiencing painful intercourse following the implantation, Hammonds underwent corrective surgery, but allegedly continued to experience pain and other complications, including incontinence. When her surgeon attempted to remove the mesh in subsequent surgeries, it was “bunched up” along the undersurface of Hammonds’ bladder, which likely caused perforation of the organ, according to Hammonds. Portions of the mesh allegedly adhered to Hammonds’ bladder and could not be removed.
In her complaint, Hammonds alleged that the Prolift device’s Prolene polypropylene filaments were unfit for use in the human body and, as such, the device was defective.
The Food and Drug Administration granted 510(k) clearance of the Prolift device in 2005. In a July 2011 safety communication, the FDA warned that “surgical placement of mesh through the vagina to repair pelvic organ prolapse may expose patients to greater risk than other surgical options.” The agency added that there is “no evidence of greater clinical benefit such as improved quality of life.”
Ethicon removed its Gynecare Prolift Pelvic Floor Repair System, Prolift MTM, TVT Secur, and Prosima vaginal mesh systems from the market in mid-2012, citing financial reasons.
Dr. Anne Weber (urogynecology) appeared as a plaintiff’s expert. Plaintiffs' counsel also called Ethicon engineer Scott Ciarocca as a witness.
Counsel for Hammonds are Shanin Specter of Kline & Specter in Philadelphia and Adam Slater of Mazie Slater in Roseland, N.J.
Ethicon is represented by Susan M. Robinson of Thomas Combs & Spann in Charleston, W. Va.
Hammons v. Ethicon Inc., No. 130503913 (Pa. Court of Comm. Pls.)
Associated Law Firms
Kline & Specter
Mazie Slater
Thomas Combs & Spann
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$5.5 Million Compensatory Verdict Returned In 1st Pelvic Mesh Trial In Pennsylvania
| LexisNexis
By Tom Moylan
A Pennsylvania state court jury on Dec. 21 returned a $5.5 million verdict in the first pelvic mesh case from the state’s complex litigation docket to go to trial, according to one of the plaintiff’s attorneys (Patricia L. Hammons v. Ethicon Inc., No. 130503913, Pa. Comm. Pls., Philadelphia Co.).
Plaintiff attorney Shanin Specter of Kline & Specter in Philadelphia told Mealey Publications that the jury in the Philadelphia County Common Pleas Court found that the Prolift pelvic mesh device made by the Ethicon Inc. division of Johnson & Johnson was defective, that the defendant failed to properly warn of the risk of the device and that the defendant was negligent and acted in reckless disregard for the safety of others. The jury also found that the defendant acted in a way to justify punitive damages.
Specter said the jury awarded $5.5 million in compensatory damages for past and future pain and suffering, loss of the pleasures of life, disfigurement and humiliation.
Punitive Damage Verdict To Come
Specter said the jury is to consider punitive damages on Dec. 22.
Hammons alleges that the mesh in the Prolift device contracted and cause dyspareunia, or pain during sex.
In addition to Specter, Hammons is represented by Lee Balefsky, Kila Baldwin and Michelle Tiger of Kline & Specter and Adam Slater of Mazie, Slater, Katz & Freeman in Roseland, N.J.
The defendants are represented by Susan Robinson of Thomas Combs & Spann in Charleston, W.Va., Matthew Moriarty of Tucker Ellis in Cleveland, Molly Flynn of Drinker Biddle Reath in Philadelphia and Tarek Ismail of Goldman, Ismail, Tomaselli, Brennan & Baum in Chicago.
Traditional Media Coverage
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