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Ethicon Media Monitoring 10/5/2017
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Plaintiffs' Lawyers Defend Deposition Requests in Mesh Litigation
Oct 4, 2017 | The Legal Intelligencer
By Paul Dannunzio
The legal team representing the plaintiffs in a slew of pelvic mesh cases in Philadelphia has fired back in response to defendant Ethicon Pharmaceuticals' argument that the plaintiffs' deposition requests are too much too late. -
*Breaking* Huskey $3.27 Mesh Verdict Survives Final J&J Appeal!
Oct 4, 2017 | Mesh Medical Device Newsdesk
Johnson & Johnson and its Ethicon division has just exhausted its final appeal of the Huskey’s pelvic mesh verdict of $3.27 million, ending five years of litigation. -
Your Turn: Husband on his Mesh-Injured Wife and Their Life
Oct 4, 2017 | Mesh Medical Device Newsdesk
Mesh injuries do not just impact a woman. Families are involved – children lose their mother, sisters suffer and so do husbands. -
Australian Transvaginal Mesh Lawsuit Continues, as Senior Johnson & Johnson Exec takes the Stand
Oct 4, 2017 | RX Injury Help (blog)
By Sandy Liebhard
Testimony continued this week in a transvaginal mesh lawsuit trial involving hundreds of Australian women, as a senior Johnson & Johnson executive took the stand to defend his company’s handling of the controversial implants.
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Plaintiffs' Lawyers Defend Deposition Requests in Mesh Litigation
Oct 4, 2017 | The Legal Intelligencer
By Paul Dannunzio
The legal team representing the plaintiffs in a slew of pelvic mesh cases in Philadelphia has fired back in response to defendant Ethicon Pharmaceuticals' argument that the plaintiffs' deposition requests are too much too late.
Ethicon, which is facing over 100 lawsuits in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas Complex Litigation Center over its pelvic mesh products, asked Judge Arnold New to quash deposition notices the plaintiffs sent to company officials, including Ethicon's strategic sourcing manager. The depositions are aimed at gathering information about the extent to which a Pennsylvania-based company, Secant, supplied biomaterials to Ethicon for use in its mesh products, addressing the current dispute over venue. But the defendant has contended the depositions are overkill and that it already provided thousands of pages of documents on the subject already.
In a response to Ethicon's motion to quash, Kline & Specter attorney Lee Balefsky wrote that there is, in fact, enough documentation to support the plaintiffs' contention that Secant provided the materials to Ethicon---but their request for depositions is still appropriate.
"It was appropriate for plaintiffs to seek this discovery to clarify any ambiguity," the response said. "Unfortunately, Ethicon now seeks to prevent these depositions from occurring. The court should allow the noticed depositions to proceed.
The response also claimed that affidavits between Secant and Ethicon employees would provide more insight into the relationship between the two companies and the manufacturer of the mesh.
"These affidavits explain that Ethicon supplied Secant with suture (in Pennsylvania) and then controlled every aspect of how Secant (in Pennsylvania) wove that suture into the mesh that Ethicon used in its products," the response said. "Along with the discovery produced to date, these affidavits confirm that Secant has been the sole manufacturer of the mesh that has been used in the products at issue in the case pending before this court."
The dispute over the correct home for the cases intensified after the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Bristol-Myers Squibb v. Superior Court of California.
The Bristol-Myers Squibb decision, which has been characterized as a game-changing decision by some, made clear that out-of-state plaintiffs can't sue companies where the defendants aren't considered to be "at home," or haven't conducted business directly linked to the claimed injury.
Ethicon, which is based in New Jersey, has argued that Bristol-Myers Squibb means 90 cases that were filed in Philadelphia court by out-of-state plaintiffs should be tossed, leaving just 30 cases pending in the state court. That ruling hinged on the relationship between Bristol-Myers Squibb and a California-based pharmaceutical distributor, with the court finding their relationship was not significant enough for non-California residents to sue Bristol-Myers Squibb in the Golden State.
In the pelvic mesh program, plaintiffs have pointed to the fact that Secant, which is located in Bucks County, manufactured the plastic mesh materials used in the mesh implants as the basis for their argument that jurisdiction is proper in Pennsylvania even though Ethicon is based in New Jersey.
Ethicon's recent motion seeking to quash the depositions and to have a protective order imposed contended that the depositions requests far exceeded the scope of New's Sept. 15 order calling for post-argument briefing on the extent to which Ethicon uses Secant's materials.
"Johnson & Johnson is trying the old tactic of ducking responsibility by ducking a deposition," Kline & Specter co-founder Shanin Specter said after Ethicon filed its motion to quash the deposition.
An Ethicon spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.
http://www.thelegalintelligencer.com/id=1202799660643/Plaintiffs-Lawyers-Defend-Deposition-Requests-in-Mesh-Litigation?mcode=1202617075166&curindex=5
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*Breaking* Huskey $3.27 Mesh Verdict Survives Final J&J Appeal!
Oct 4, 2017 | Mesh Medical Device Newsdesk
Mesh Medical Device News Desk, October 4, 2017~ Johnson & Johnson and its Ethicon division has just exhausted its final appeal of the Huskey’s pelvic mesh verdict of $3.27 million, ending five years of litigation.
The U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) will not hear the Ethicon appeal of the product liability trial of Jo Huskey and her husband.
That was the last bite of the apple for the healthcare giant.
Ms. Huskey’s attorneys were Fidelma Fitzpatrick and Ed Wallace, who had this to say to MND,
Several years ago we started on a journey to simply make sure that Ethicon acknowledged it caused Jo Huskey harm and if Ethicon refused, we wanted to make sure that Ethicon was held accountable. Jo Huskey was one of tens of thousands of women that had filed claims in West Virginia, she was now a number on a legal docket, and it was unclear if her case would ever see a courtroom. Somehow her case was selected as a “bellwether” case and suddenly Jo was thrust into the national spotlight.
“Jo has handled herself admirably. Every nook and cranny of her life was examined, and when something happened in her case, Jo would not only ask how this affected her and her family, she also wanted to know how the other women like her were affected by whatever happened in her case. That careful and caring attitude has remained the same throughout the case and all the way up the Supreme Court. I’ve spoken with her and she wants everyone to know how she grateful she is for the well wishes and is glad to see that the Courts have done the right thing. And now, Ethicon has finally been held accountable. Finally.”
In 2014, Huskey v. Ethicon (2:12-cv-05201) was heard in Charleston, West Virginia before Judge Goodwin.
The jury awarded her damages totaling $3.27 million. This was the first bellwether pelvic mesh case naming Ethicon to go to trial in this multidistrict litigation where presently there are more than 104,000 cases filed.
The litigation concluded with compensatory damages and a decision that her pelvic mesh, a TVT-O, was defective.
Ethicon appealed the verdict, first to Judge Goodwin. He refused to throw out the verdict. Ethicon would not be deterred and took the case to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals but it too rejected Ethicon’s arguments. The appeals court also affirmed the TVT-O had a defective design.
Find the Fourth Circuit decision here.
Dusting itself off once again, Ethicon appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to review the appellate court decision. It was the same move J&J tried in the pelvic mesh $11.1 million verdict in the 2013 mesh trial of Linda Gross. In that case as well, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case.Ethicon had planned to argue that TVT-O was cleared through the FDA’s 510(k) process so it had followed requirements to market, and that the Prolene suture, which makes up the TVT-O also had FDA clearance and a history of safe use.
Ethicon had also argued that the Huskey’s failed to prove that a specific defect of the TVT-O design caused her harm, such as a heavyweight polypropylene mesh.
The Huskey case was the second to find the TVT-O was defectively designed. In April, 2014, a Dallas jury awarded Linda Batiste $1.1 million over her TVT-O, with jurors deciding the polypropylene sling used to treat incontinence was defectively designed.
Ethicon will have to save that argument for another day. ###
HUSKEY TRIAL
Huskey had proven by the preponderance of the evidence, defective design, a failure to warn, strict liability and negligence in her lawsuit against Johnson & Johnson and its division, Ethicon.
She was awarded:
$100, 000 – Reasonable medical costs
$470,000 – Past pain and suffering, mental anguish
$2.5 Million – pain, suffering, mental anguish, disability, loss enjoyment of life now and in the future.
$200,000 – Loss of consortium Mr. Huskey
= $3.27 million
LEARN MORE:
MND, Huskey case going to the Supreme Court? June 2017
https://www.meshmedicaldevicenewsdesk.com/jo-huskey-pelvic-mesh-case-going-supremes/MND Huskey Transvaginal mesh $3.27 Million Award Affirmed by Appeals Court, February 2017,
https://www.meshmedicaldevicenewsdesk.com/huskey-transvaginal-mesh-3-27-award-affirmed-appeals-court/US Court of Appeals Fourth Circuit, January 26, 2017
http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-4th-circuit/1768557.htmlMND, Linda Gross $11.1 Million Jury Verdict Survives Final J&J Challenge, December 6, 2016
https://www.meshmedicaldevicenewsdesk.com/linda-gross-11-1-m-jury-verdict-survives-final-jj-challenge/MND, Coverage of Huskey Trial
https://www.meshmedicaldevicenewsdesk.com/?s=huskeyhttps://www.meshmedicaldevicenewsdesk.com/breaking-huskey-3-27-mesh-verdict-survives-final-jj-appeal/
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Your Turn: Husband on his Mesh-Injured Wife and Their Life
Oct 4, 2017 | Mesh Medical Device Newsdesk
Mesh Medical Device News Desk, October 4, 2017~ Mesh injuries do not just impact a woman. Families are involved – children lose their mother, sisters suffer and so do husbands.
Some even leave.
The best of them stay, like this man.
He is anonymous but his words resonate with many. Thank you Katrina S. for bringing it to our attention.
In the winter of 2011, ******* and I started a relationship.
I thought she was a well put together woman that was full of life, energy, and self-motivated with long-term goals for her life. We were both ready to settle down, work hard and enjoy the rest of our lives together; which, we did for a very short time. We put our money together and started our own single truck owner-operator, trucking company. This allowed us to be together, work together, and travel the country, all the while working for our retirement.
Not long after we started our new investment and life together, we began to notice something was wrong with our sex life. In fact, she was experiencing severe pain during and after sex, and I was getting sores/scratches on my penis, unaware of the mesh even existing. This was before she found out the mesh was implanted and it had eroded through the vaginal wall.
You already know about the medical facts from her statement; but, I started a new life becoming her care giver, sitting by her side and comforting her as she goes through multiple doctor visits and surgeries. Watching her slowly change from the vibrant, energetic woman to someone who is in constant pain and suffering. We have spent so much of our time taking off of work loosing valuable time and money, not only in our business and investment, but in our personal life.
The time we wanted to spend enjoying with each other and living this life of work and travel, now seems to be working to survive the time we spend in the doctor’s office, paying for what seems to be a never ending search for answers to the conditions that she is forced to live with now. It is not us traveling and enjoying the sites and adventures this great country has to offer while working towards retirement. It is working long weeks, 24 hours a day, so we can make it to the next doctor’s visit. It has gotten to the point where when we do travel; she cannot even get in and out of the truck. Most days she never even gets out of the truck to take a simple walk into the store to get her own food or drink because of the pain.
We never go any place where there are stairs, inclines or just general site seeing that involves extended periods of walking or sitting. We avoid restaurants, park benches or any seating arrangements that are not conducive to her inability to sit in a straight up position. She will literally just turn around and walk away from anything enjoyable, because she can’t sit if the seating is not comfortable. She can’t even lay down or relax to go to sleep without taking some type of medication. She can’t walk down her own driveway 100 yards to check the mail without some kind of assistance.
We can’t even have sex without me wondering how painful it is for her. This makes it worse when I am holding her while she’s crying herself to sleep because of the pain. She sometimes wants to give up because she worries about me. She worries she is letting me down and not being able to contribute to our business and personal life. It is very hard to watch someone that you love, admire and had everything going for them, miss out on life.
In the time we have spent since the diagnosis, I have watched her become less of a strong independent woman owning and running her own business into a dependent woman who is unsure if she can even get up and walk to the bathroom.
We have incurred multiple loans and debt from our family and taken out second mortgages to keep up with the costs of doctors, hotels, and travel to see these doctors. It seems we can’t stay at our business long enough to get ahead because we are constantly paying out dollars because of the mesh implant that she never asked for or ever knew she had in the first place.
It is a shame that the medical community can do this to people and continue the same to unsuspecting people in the future.
I feel that the manufacturer of this product has continually lied to the people and the physicians just to sell the product and be unconcerned of the risks involved. It is my wish that they would just realize and admit to the problems this product has caused and remove it from the market. It is sad that the manufacturer can say they now have a safe product and change some small print on a medical form, have the patient sign it and continue on down the destructive path of injuring and destroying the lives of innocent people that put their trust and lives in the medical industry and the physicians that supposedly care for them.
In closing, I feel that this product and its makers have taken away our business, personal and social life to the point that we may never recover. The losses we have incurred will continue to grow because it seems that no one can repair the physical or emotional damage that my wife and I have endured.
It is a tragedy that we, or anyone, has to suffer this way.
https://www.meshmedicaldevicenewsdesk.com/turn-husband-mesh-injured-wife-life/
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Australian Transvaginal Mesh Lawsuit Continues, as Senior Johnson & Johnson Exec takes the Stand
Oct 4, 2017 | RX Injury Help (blog)
By Sandy Liebhard
Sandy Liebhard is an Senior Partner at Bernstein Liebhard LLP
Testimony continued this week in a transvaginal mesh lawsuit trial involving hundreds of Australian women, as a senior Johnson & Johnson executive took the stand to defend his company’s handling of the controversial implants.
According to The Guardian, the Johnson & Johnson’s vice-president of medical affairs, Piet Hinoul, was called to provide details on a single report of a transvaginal mesh complication received the company’s Ethicon, Inc. subsidiary in 2009.
The report in question involved a woman in the U.K. who had developed two infections following implantation of an Ethicon pelvic mesh product, the first 12 months after her surgery and the second three years later. Emails authored by Hinoul described those complications as a “transitory foreign body response”, a normal reaction that was addressed in the company’s instructions for use to surgeons.
Hinoul recommended against reporting the case to the U.K.’s medical device regulator, asserting that Johnson & Johnson was only obligated to report complications that were not listed in the product’s instructions for use.
During questioning, the plaintiffs’ attorney accused Hinoul of placing Johnson & Johnson’s interests above the interests of patients, and asserted that he had taken an unreasonable approach to the instructions for use to protect the company.
Hinoul denied both accusations.Australian Transvaginal Mesh Lawsuit Considered a “Landmark” Case
The Australian transvaginal mesh lawsuit was brought on behalf of more than 700 women who accuse Ethicon, Inc. of marketing defective transvaginal mesh implants that caused chronic pain and made intimacy impossible. According to the class action complaint, many of these women will be forced to endure painful vaginal mesh complications for the remainder of their lives.
The Australian transvaginal mesh trial got underway in July and could continue for several more months. The lawsuit is considered a landmark case both for the number of women involved and the expected length of the trial.U.S. Transvaginal Mesh Litigation
Transvaginal mesh implants have been implanted in thousands of women to treat pelvic organ prolapse or stress urinary incontinence. Since 2008, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has issued several warnings regarding serious complications potentially associated with the devices. In July 2011, the FDA reversed its opinion that vaginal mesh complications related to prolapse repair were rare, and questioned whether such procedures offered any additional benefits compared to traditional non-mesh surgery.
Hundreds of thousands of women in the U.S. have since filed transvaginal mesh lawsuits against Ethicon and other devices manufacturers, including American Medical Systems, Inc., Boston Scientific Corp., C.R. Bard, Inc., Coloplast Corp., Cook Medical, Inc. and Neomedic. Juries hearing these cases have rendered verdicts for both plaintiffs and defendants. A significant percentage of claims have also been settled, though thousands remain pending in federal and state courts throughout the country.
Most recently, a jury in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania awarded more than $57 million in compensatory and punitive damages to a woman who suffered serious complications following implantation of two of Ethicon’s TVT mesh devices.
Earlier this week, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear Ethicon’s appeal of a $3.27 million verdict in a 2014 federal case involving its TVT-O mesh implant.
https://www.rxinjuryhelp.com/news/2017/10/04/australian-transvaginal-mesh-lawsuit-continues-as-senior-johnson-johnson-exec-takes-the-stand/
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