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Beltz Verdict
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Woman Awarded $2.1M in Fourth Pelvic Mesh Trial
May 26, 2017 | The Legal Intelligencer
By P.J. D'Annunzio
A Philadelphia jury has awarded $2.1 million to a woman claiming she experienced ongoing pain resulting from the deterioration of a pelvic mesh implant. The $2.1 million verdict in Beltz v. Ethicon came in the fourth pelvic mesh trial against Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Ethicon in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas. The jury handed up its verdict May 26 after 12 days of trial and nine hours of deliberation. -
J&J Hit With $2.16M Verdict In 4th Philly Mesh Case
May 26, 2017 | Law360
By Dan Packel
Johnson & Johnson continued a string of losses in Philadelphia’s pelvic mesh mass tort program Friday, but the $2.16 million award in favor of a Pennsylvania woman was the lowest figure yet in the four cases tried to verdict and the first to not include punitive damages.
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Woman Awarded $2.1M in Fourth Pelvic Mesh Trial
May 26, 2017 | The Legal Intelligencer
By P.J. D'Annunzio
A Philadelphia jury has awarded $2.1 million to a woman claiming she experienced ongoing pain resulting from the deterioration of a pelvic mesh implant.
The $2.1 million verdict in Beltz v. Ethicon came in the fourth pelvic mesh trial against Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Ethicon in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas. The jury handed up its verdict May 26 after 12 days of trial and nine hours of deliberation.
The verdict came just under a month after a jury handed up a $20 million verdict—including $17.5 million in punitive damages—in the third trial.
According to plaintiff Sharon Beltz's attorney, Thomas R. Kline of Kline & Specter, the 12-member jury found the Prolift mesh product was defective under the Tincher risk-utility test, answering "yes" to the question of whether the risk outweighed the cost or burden of making it safer.
"This is now our fourth consecutive Philadelphia jury verdict award [of] multimillion dollars against Johnson and Johnson for their dangerously defective transvaginal mesh products which injured tens of thousands of women, this being the second straight jury verdict relating to its dangerous Prolift product, which was withdrawn from the market in 2012," Kline said in an email. "We are pleased that Sharon Beltz, a woman from Pen Argyl, Pennsylvania, will be compensated, and expect many additional jury verdicts to follow."
Johnson & Johnson did not respond to a request for comment.
According to Beltz's pretrial memorandum, the mesh could not be removed.
"Mrs. Beltz's problems are thus permanent. She may elect to undergo further pain injections, resection of the mesh, or start taking pain medications regularly, but these options at best will only mitigate her symptoms. She has to live the remainder of her life with constant pelvic pain, a sensation her bladder is pulling, urinary incontinence and retention, lower flank pain, urinary tract infections, and severe pain with sex that lingers days after she has intercourse," court papers said.
"She will be at risk for exposure of the mesh in her vagina and erosion of the mesh into her bladder, urethra, or other organs for the remainder of her life."
Ethicon countered with several defenses, including statute of limitations arguments, claims that her suit was barred by the mesh's warranty, and that she couldn't prove causation. Additionally, Ethicon said punitive damages were not warranted.
Ethicon argued that the mesh "has been proven to be safe and effective in patients with SUI, is the standard of care, and is a suitable first-line surgical option as recognized in the pertinent professional society incontinence treatment guidelines, analyses, systematic reviews and position statements as well as Cochrane Reviews," according to its pretrial memorandum.
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J&J Hit With $2.16M Verdict In 4th Philly Mesh Case
May 26, 2017 | Law360
By Dan Packel
Johnson & Johnson continued a string of losses in Philadelphia’s pelvic mesh mass tort program Friday, but the $2.16 million award in favor of a Pennsylvania woman was the lowest figure yet in the four cases tried to verdict and the first to not include punitive damages.
A 12-member jury ruled that the risks of J&J subsidiary Ethicon Inc.’s Prolift mesh product outweighed its benefits and that the implant was responsible for plaintiff Sharon Beltz’s pain during sexual intercourse and chronic vaginal pain.
“It’s consistent with the previous verdicts, which there now are four, in which our firm has played a significant role as trial counsel,” said Thomas Kline of Kline & Specter PC.
But the jury found the mesh performed as expected and was properly designed, and concluded that Ethicon properly warned Beltz’s implanting surgeon about the risks of the product.
Kline noted that the first jury question, in which the jury found that Prolift did not fail to perform as safely as an ordinary consumer would expect, and the second question, in which the jury found the risks outweighed the benefits of the product, both came out of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s recent jurisprudence in the closely watched Tincher v. Omega Flex case. That case established two ways to assess product liability under state law.
“This case was a good test of the Tincher alternative standard,” he said. “It showed the plaintiff could win on one or another.”
He attributed the losses on the failure to warn claims and consumer expectations claims to a conclusion by the jury that Beltz’s doctor, who he said was closely tied to J&J, was an “insider” who knew what risks she was taking.
“But the cost-benefit analysis was a different story, especially because of our evidence that they had a better mesh and there was no additional cost to use the better mesh,” he said, adding that he had produced a “devastating email” that showed they didn’t want to use it because it would lower the price of the product.
The jury of eight women and four men was on its second day of deliberations when they returned the unanimous verdict just before noon on Friday, concluding a trial that lasted three full weeks.
Beltz, who filed her lawsuit in 2013, had the Prolift implanted in 2006, one year after it was released, to treat pelvic organ prolapse and stress urinary incontinence following four pregnancies. Ethicon stopped selling the mesh in 2012.
The suit was part of a string of more than 180 cases consolidated as part of a mass tort program in Philadelphia County’s Court of Common Pleas. The first went to trial in December 2015.
The first two trials, which were both argued by Kline’s partner Shanin Specter, resulted in a pair of awards against Ethicon totaling some $26 million.
Last month, in a case argued by Benjamin Anderson of Cleveland-based Anderson Law Offices, a jury awarded $20 million to a New Jersey woman. That verdict included $17.5 million in punitive damages.
But in spite of Kline’s plea for the jury to send a harsh message to J&J, which he said was valued at more than $70 billion, the jury declined to issue a punitive award.
Kristen Wallace, a spokeswoman for Ethicon, highlighted the fact that the jury did not award punitive damages and its findings that the product performed as expected and Beltz’s doctor was properly warned.
“We empathize with women suffering from pelvic organ prolapse, which can be a serious and debilitating condition,” she said in an email. “There are various treatment choices for this condition, including surgical treatment with implantable mesh, which is backed by years of clinical research and can be the preferred option for some women seeking to improve their quality of life.”
Wallace added that the company was studying the verdict on the risk utility claim and evaluating its legal options.
A fifth pelvic mesh trial is currently underway, and Kline noted that he did not see a global settlement on the horizon. He said the fact this case didn’t lead to punitives was an anomaly, arguing that eight out of 10 jury verdicts would likely trigger that additional sanction.
“The longer this goes on, the more it drives the price up, because juries consistently have proven these cases are not only seven-figure cases but multimillion dollar cases,” he said.
The case was presented for Beltz by Tom Kline of Kline & Specter LLP.
The case was presented for J&J by Kat Gallagher of Beck Redden LLP.
The case is Beltz v. Ethicon Women’s Health and Urology et al., case number 130603835, in the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas.
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