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Ethicon Media Monitoring 2/28/2017
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Mesh Awareness Movement Rally Gains Momentum
Feb 27, 2017 | Mesh Medical Device Newsdesk
The MAM, Mesh Awareness Movement plans to take its pelvic mesh awareness message to the next mesh event. -
Talc Plaintiff Atty Can't Tell Jury About J&J Hip, Mesh MDLs
Feb 27, 2017 | Law 360
By Cara Salvatore
The lawyer for a Tennessee woman who blames Johnson's Baby Powder for her ovarian cancer tried to tell a Missouri jury on Monday about two other Johnson & Johnson products each facing mass multidistrict litigation, but the line of questioning was heavily diluted via objections.
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Mesh Awareness Movement Rally Gains Momentum
Feb 27, 2017 | Mesh Medical Device Newsdesk
Mesh Medical Device News Desk, February 27, 2017 ~ The MAM, Mesh Awareness Movement plans to take its pelvic mesh awareness message to the next mesh event.
March 6, 2017, was supposed to be the beginning of the pelvic mesh trial of Mullins et al v. Ethicon, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson.
In an unusual move to consolidate cases, more than 20 women were planning to have their product liability trials heard in this federal court in Charleston, WV, where nearly 100,000 pelvic mesh product liability cases are filed.
In advance of the trial, there were dozens off women planning to rally, as they had on the same Byrd federal court steps in June 2015.
There were plans to drive, carpool and fly to Charleston, WV. Handmade signs were made and press statements written. There were promises of national network news coverage.
Last Thursday, the court said the Mullins case had been continued, with no new trial date set. So the rally is also on hold.
One Mullins plaintiff tells MND she was told to expect her settlement packet from J&J, but there has been no official confirmation that the cases settled.
So what happens now?
Mesh Awareness Movement (MAM) organizer, Lisa Mason, says the women are angry and are not going away.
“A lot of women are getting agitated at the costs of cancelling these trials. Who pays for all of those airline ticket purchased by law firms? That will have to come out of what we eventually have to pay them. We carry the weight of attorney fees and costs,” she tells MND.
Mason says there are renewed calls among mesh-injured women to expand the circle of media contacts and renewed enthusiasm for showing up at the Johnson & Johnson annual shareholders meeting, held every April in New Brunswick, New Jersey, the headquarters of J&J.
Three years ago, Corporate Action Network organized an event that included a light display on corporate headquarters, a protest outside J&J’s headquarters and a direct message to CEO of Johnson & Johnson, Alex Gorsky, by three mesh-injured women inside the annual shareholders meeting.
As one woman said:
“Today I call on this board and officers to conduct an investigation on whether it is worth keeping any mesh in your product line. There is no reason any woman should ever have to suffer lifelong debilitating pain or have disfiguring surgeries to remove this product. It is ironic to call a division Ethicon when it acts unethically and continues to injure so many women including your mothers, your wives, your sisters, your daughters, some of your employees, possibly yourself–not to mention myself. Please protect your brand and also protect women.”
Inside that 2014 shareholder’s meeting, Gorsky told the crowd of about 1,650 that the corporation was healthy and its three business segments were all doing well. Shareholders gave Gorsky high marks for his then two-year tenure that’s seen stock prices soaring.
The J&J annual shareholders meeting is held in New Brunswick every April.
Johnson & Johnson has been the focus of protest because the company has more defective product cases filed then any of the six other manufacturers filed in multidistrict litigation in WV.
Huffington Post, Associated Press and Reuters all covered the 2014 event. ###
LEARN MORE:
Can coverage April 27, 2014
http://www.meshmedicaldevicenewsdesk.com/shareholders-meet-with-jj-mesh-injured/Fitzgibbon Media Light Brigade Action outside 2014 Annual Shareholders Meeting, April 23, 2014.
https://vimeo.com/92990332JohnsonandJohnsonhurtswomen.org here
Associated Press with video Story here
Fitzgibbon Media Video of April 23, 2014 here
David Hall Photographer-Davideo Multimedia, LLC here
Huffington Post- 10 min in starting here
WTAE story- Pittsburgh here
Gorsky- 60 Percent Video here
http://www.meshmedicaldevicenewsdesk.com/mesh-awareness-movement-rally-gains-momentum/
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Talc Plaintiff Atty Can't Tell Jury About J&J Hip, Mesh MDLs
Feb 27, 2017 | Law 360
By Cara Salvatore
Law360, New York (February 27, 2017, 7:59 PM EST) -- The lawyer for a Tennessee woman who blames Johnson's Baby Powder for her ovarian cancer tried to tell a Missouri jury on Monday about two other Johnson & Johnson products each facing mass multidistrict litigation, but the line of questioning was heavily diluted via objections.
Nora Daniels, a 56-year-old mother of three and grandmother of two who has lived in Columbia, Tennessee, her entire life, believes that her roughly 38 years of daily talcum powder use were responsible for her 2013 ovarian tumor, which was successfully removed.
On Monday, Daniels' lawyer, Allen Smith, cross-examined J&J pharmacologist Susan Nicholson for hours about various health regulators' views of talc and the company's approach to the product from a risk standpoint once studies began to emerge, decades ago now, finding an association between perineal talc use and ovarian cancer.
Smith wanted to draw an association of his own between J&J products and litigation. The company's DePuy unit faces extensive litigation over two varieties of metal-on-metal hips, and its Ethicon unit faces the most lawsuits of seven defendants in the 60,000-plaintiff transvaginal mesh MDL in the Southern District of West Virginia. But Smith was stymied in his effort to tar Johnson's Baby Powder with the brushes of those MDLs.
“Does Johnson & Johnson or any subsidiary sell hip implants?” Smith asked Nicholson.
“Yes, they do,” she said.
“Do they sell transvaginal mesh?” he asked. This second question drew an objection from J&J's lawyers for relevance. It was sustained, and Judge Rex Burlison added, “Let's move on to what we discussed.”
“Has Johnson & Johnson or any subsidiary sold products before and put them on the market and then it was later — and represented they were safe, and then later on people made claims that those products either made them sick or killed them — or their family members?” Smith asked.
Nicholson replied that J&J does its best to put safe products on the market, but sometimes has to adjust when new data arises.
“I don't think you answered the question I asked,” Smith said. “My question was, has Johnson & Johnson or any of its subsidiaries represented that a product was safe to the public, and then later on those that used the product, the consumers, alleged that that product made them sick or one of their family members die?”
J&J's counsel then objected again, once more for relevance. This time, the objection was overruled, and Smith was eventually able to establish that Johnson & Johnson is, in fact, currently facing other product lawsuits. But the specificity of that fact was far less than what Smith had wanted the jury to hear.
Meanwhile, Daniels took the stand on Thursday and told the jury that she has been “shocked” over the past few days to learn key details about the tumor she had removed in 2013, like the stage it had reached and the fact that it could return.
Daniels is a stay-at-home mother to her 12-year-old and 18-year-old, and also takes care of one of her grandchildren full time. Her husband died of liver problems the same year she had her cancer removed.
Daniels also told jurors of the debilitating abdominal pain she experienced for six days before visiting the emergency room of and being whisked into surgery days later. Jurors also heard of the sickness and fatigue that would overtake her for a solid week after each of six day-long chemotherapy treatments she had to undergo after surgery.
And on Feb. 21, a Harvard epidemiologist testifying as an expert witness for Daniels was asked by J&J's lawyers why, if Daniels was so interested in pinpointing the cause of her ovarian cancer, she has avoided a key genetic test.
The trial opened Feb. 9, when Smith said the company’s “love of money result[ed] in all manner of evil” for women who used its baby powder.
Daniels is represented by Ted Meadows and David Dearing of Beasley Allen and Allen Smith of Talc Litigation Group and The Smith Law Firm PLLC.
Johnson & Johnson is represented by Bart Williams and Manuel Cachán of Proskauer Rose LLP, Kimberly Dunne of Sidley Austin LLP, and Thomas Magee of HelperBroom.
The case is Swann v. Johnson & Johnson, case number 1422-CC09326-01, in the 22nd Judicial Circuit Court of Missouri.
For more coverage of this trial, visit Courtroom View Network.
--Editing by Orlando Lorenzo.https://www.law360.com/articles/896017/talc-plaintiff-atty-can-t-tell-jury-about-j-j-hip-mesh-mdls
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