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Ethicon Media Monitoring 5/31/2018
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Trial lawyer panel: Plaintiffs' lawyers adapting strategies to fit post-BristolMyersSquibb legal landscape
May 31, 2018 | Cook County Record
By Jonathan Bilyk
In the wake of a recent landmark ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court restricting the ability of out-of-state plaintiffs to sue large manufacturers and other corporations, plaintiffs’ lawyers across the country have watched with trepidation as they waited to see just how much... -
Woman Dies After Doctor Removed Her Ovaries During Surgery Without Consent
May 30, 2018 | Tech Times
By Allan Adamson
One of Britain's best-known surgeons is now under investigation after his patient, 58-year-old Lucinda Methuen-Campbell, killed herself after a botched operation. -
A woman took her own life following “botched” mesh-implant surgery
May 30, 2018 | The Pool
By Zoë Beaty
A woman died by suicide due to excruciating pain she experienced following surgery to insert mesh implants, an inquest into her death has heard.
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May 31, 2018 | Cook County Record
By Jonathan Bilyk
In the wake of a recent landmark ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court restricting the ability of out-of-state plaintiffs to sue large manufacturers and other corporations, plaintiffs’ lawyers across the country have watched with trepidation as they waited to see just how much the cases and business models they had spent years building could be sliced.
However, while the ruling has resulted in some significant wins for corporate defendants, thwarting some potentially large cases, the gut punch many feared may have proven easier to sidestep than had been originally believed, said a panel of plaintiffs’ trial lawyers during a presentation at a recent litigation conference in Chicago.
On May 30, HarrisMartin Publishing hosted its “MDL Conference: ‘Bet-the-Company’ Mass Tort Litigation” at the Peninsula Hotel in Chicago’s River North district, assembling panels of some of the country’s most prominent trial lawyers to discuss and share insights on many of the biggest litigation topics pending in courts across the U.S.
Among other topics, panelists – mostly culled from many of the firms representing plaintiffs in a number of huge legal actions – discussed a range of product liability and negligence-related claims now pending against pharmaceutical makers and distributors, social media companies, app developers and other companies and organizations.
However, no matter the topic, all needed to first address what in recent months has become a new routine hurdle to allowing so-called “mass tort” lawsuits to proceed:
A motion to dismiss from defendants questioning whether a court can actually hear a lawsuit brought by plaintiffs who either don’t live in a jurisdiction, or brought against corporate targets who may not have enough of a connection to a jurisdiction to keep a lawsuit in the court desired by plaintiffs.
In 2017, those kind of efforts got a boost from the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Bristol Myers Squibb v Superior Court of California. In that ruling, the Supreme Court struck down a California Supreme Court ruling finding out-of-state plaintiffs could join with in-state plaintiffs to sue pharmaceutical company Bristol Myers Squibb over the alleged effects of its drug Plavix in California state court - even though BMS was based in New York and had no real business connection to California, beyond selling its medications to Golden State residents.
Across the country, attorneys and legal observers expected the decision to result in massive changes to the class action and “mass tort” legal landscape.
However, the actual impact of the decision may be significantly less than what many defendants may have hoped or anticipated, said panelists at the HarrisMartin conference.
“I don’t think it’s been some kind of bar on these kinds of mass torts,” said Dustin Carter, an attorney who works with the mass tort and complex litigation team at the firm of Neblett, Beard & Arsenault in Alexandria, La.
“Everyone initially thought it would be this large precedent. But non-resident plaintiffs can still bring cases,” he said.
Fellow panelist Nicholas Drakulich, of The Drakulich Firm, of San Diego, agreed, while noting the post-BMS landscape may require plaintiffs’ lawyers to simply work harder.
Drakulich pointed to a recent decision from Philadelphia, where a judge in that city’s Court of Common Pleas had rejected the motion from Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Ethicon Inc. to dismiss more than 120 lawsuits brought against the company by plaintiffs alleging they had been injured by Ethicon’s transvaginal mesh products.
All of the lawsuits had been filed by plaintiffs from outside Pennsylvania, and Ethicon had argued the Supreme Court’s holding in the Bristol Myers Squibb decision required such cases to be dismissed.
Plaintiffs, however, had responded by arguing a company in Pennsylvania had been part of Ethicon’s manufacturing process for its mesh product, and therefore, the case belonged in the Pennsylvania court.
And Philadelphia Judge Arnold New sided with the plaintiffs, finding all of them should be allowed to bring their cases in Philadelphia court.
“As the saying goes: ‘There’s the law, and it’s all shaped by the facts,’” said Drakulich. “And facts can be tough things. So our job is to go find those tough things, and then prove those tough things.”
Drakulich conceded Bristol Myers Squibb has delivered some changes sought by businesses and employers.
In Missouri in March, for instance, U.S. District Judge Stephen Limbaugh cited the BMS decision in carving out 92 out-of-state plaintiffs from a mass action lawsuit against drugmaker Bayer over the company’s implantable birth control device, Essure.
And, while the panelists did not cite Illinois cases, the Illinois state Supreme Court and various appellate justices have cited BMS in restricting the ability of out-of-state plaintiffs to use Illinois courts – which are generally considered more favorable to plaintiffs – to sue defendants based in other states.
Despite the success of some defendants to use BMS to thwart plaintiffs’ legal gambits, panelists said plaintiffs’ lawyers are beginning to adapt to the new environment, and develop strategies to defeat BMS-inspired motions.
In later presentations focused on other topics, other panelists also described strategies and efforts to defeat BMS-centered motions to dismiss.
Attorney Lance Unglesby, of New Orleans, for instance, noted the legal team suing J&J over Essure kept more than 1,000 cases in court in St. Louis by noting the product had been tested in St. Louis.
And attorney Kevin Durkin, of the Clifford Law Offices, of Chicago, in also discussing strategies to prevent corporate defendants from consolidating a lawsuit with perhaps hundreds or thousands of others in federal court, advised plaintiffs’ lawyers to find ways to add “viable” local defendants to litigation “in good faith.”
Overall, however, Drakulich said the basic rules of mass tort lawsuits remain the same.
“You pick your fights, you pick your forums, you develop your case,” Drakulich said.
https://cookcountyrecord.com/stories/511435630-trial-lawyer-panel-plaintiffs-lawyers-adapting-strategies-to-fit-post-bristolmyerssquibb-legal-landscape
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Woman Dies After Doctor Removed Her Ovaries During Surgery Without Consent
May 30, 2018 | Tech Times
By Allan Adamson
One of Britain's best-known surgeons is now under investigation after his patient, 58-year-old Lucinda Methuen-Campbell, killed herself after a botched operation.
Surprised To Learn Her Ovaries Were Removed During Surgery
Anthony Dixon, who has built an international reputation for fixing his patients' bowel problems with vaginal mesh implants, reportedly removed Methuen-Campbell's ovaries during an operation without the latter's knowledge.
Methuen-Campbell, who sought treatment for a bowel disorder at the Spire Hospital in Bristol, England in 2016, claimed to have been surprised when she learned after her surgery that the doctor had removed her ovaries.
Methuen-Campbell said that the removal of the ovaries was never discussed prior to her operation. She said that the doctor thought he was doing her a favor when he removed the organs.
When she asked the doctor why he removed her ovaries, the surgeon reportedly said that they were getting in the way.
"He said he thought he'd done me a favour." Methuen-Campbell related. "I said 'Why did you remove them?' and he just said 'They were in the way'."
Suffered From Agonizing Pain After Operations
The procedure left Methuen-Campbell in agony. She experienced pain, which got worse over time. She had a follow-up operation but things became worse. She was later found hanged in her attic.
Swansea assistant coroner Aled Gruffydd said that the death was a suicide, and cited that the operation made the pain worse and affected Methuen-Campbell's mental health.
Methuen-Campbell's ex-partner, Philip Chatfield, said Methuen-Campbell thought there was no way out of the pain. She was desperate to find a solution to her pain, which continued despite seeing other doctors.
Methuen-Campbell's 19-year-old son Angus said that his mother suffered a great deal of pain after her operations and that she was upset about the removal of her ovaries.
Suspended From Two Hospitals
Dixon is now under investigation by the National Health Service and has been suspended from two hospitals. The General Medical Council has also stopped him from performing another form of a corrective surgical procedure called the Starr procedure until November this year.
On his part, Dixon had acknowledged that all operations have potential problems but these were done in good faith and most of these were successful.
Medical Malpractice
Doctors' actions and decisions during surgeries have been the subjects of medical malpractice lawsuits. In 2016, a woman sued a surgeon for a phone conversation while operating on her.
A Pennsylvania man, on the other hand, was awarded $870,000 after his doctor removed the wrong testicle during surgery.
http://www.techtimes.com/articles/228923/20180530/woman-dies-after-doctor-removed-her-ovaries-during-surgery-without-consent.htm
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A woman took her own life following “botched” mesh-implant surgery
May 30, 2018 | The Pool
By Zoë Beaty
A woman died by suicide due to excruciating pain she experienced following surgery to insert mesh implants, an inquest into her death has heard. Lucinda Methuen-Campbell had also learned during recovery that her surgeon had removed her ovaries without her consent during the operation “because they were in the way”. She was 58 when she died.
Methuen-Campbell had previously told the BBC in an interview that, following her 2016 operation, carried out by Dr Anthony Dixon at The Spire Hospital in Bristol, she felt her life had been ruined. “He said he thought he’d done me a favour,” Methuen-Campbell said of Dixon. “And he said, ‘I thought you know, a woman of your age wouldn’t really need her ovaries’.”
“I said, ‘why did you remove them?’ and he just said ‘they were in the way’.”
Methuen-Campbell, from Swansea, had attended the private hospital in the hope that a mesh implant would solve problems she was experiencing with her womb and bowels. Yet the operation only left her in increasingly chronic pain – and follow-up surgery only worsened her condition. Upon taking her own life, she left a note addressed to her 19-year-old son. Her death was recorded by Swansea assistant coroner Aled Gruffydd as suicide. “The operation on Mrs Methuen-Campbell was unsuccessful and made her pain worse, and it affected her mental health,” Gruffydd said.
https://www.the-pool.com/health/health-news/2018/22/zoe-beaty-reports-woman-took-her-own-life-after-mesh-surgery
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