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Boston Scientific Verdict
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Boston Scientific Ordered to Pay $100 Million Over Mesh
May 28, 2015 | Bloomberg
By Jef Feeley
Boston Scientific Corp. must pay $100 million to a Delaware woman who blamed the company’s vaginal-mesh inserts for leaving her in constant pain and unable to have sex, in the first verdict after the company agreed to begin settling cases over the devices, and the biggest yet. -
Boston Scientific ordered to pay $100 mln in transvaginal mesh trial
May 28, 2015 | Reuters
By Jessica Dye
A Delaware jury on Thursday ordered Boston Scientific to pay $100 million to a woman who said she was injured by transvaginal mesh, a device that is the subject of more than 25,000 lawsuits against the company. -
Boston Scientific Hit With Record $100M Verdict In Mesh Case
May 28, 2015 | Law360
By Jody Godoy
A Delaware jury awarded $100 million to a woman who sued Boston Scientific Corp. over injuries from the company's pelvic mesh on Thursday in the biggest win yet over the medical implant that has elicited thousands of injury lawsuits. -
Jury Hits Bos Sci with $100M Verdict for Faulty Transvaginal Meshes
May 28, 2015 | Medical Device and Diagnostic Industry
By Arundhati Parmar
A Delaware state court ordered Boston Scientific to pay $100 million to a woman hurt by its faulty transvaginal mesh products.
Coverage Thus Far
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Boston Scientific Ordered to Pay $100 Million Over Mesh
May 28, 2015 | Bloomberg
By Jef Feeley
Boston Scientific Corp. must pay $100 million to a Delaware woman who blamed the company’s vaginal-mesh inserts for leaving her in constant pain and unable to have sex, in the first verdict after the company agreed to begin settling cases over the devices, and the biggest yet.
A state-court jury in Delaware found Thursday that Boston Scientific’s Pinnacle and Advantage Fit inserts, built to buttress sagging organs and treat incontinence in women, were defectively designed and company executives hid the flaws from Deborah Barba.
The 51-year-old former bank teller contends the inserts eroded once they were implanted, leaving her with a scarred vagina and a host of medical problems.
The jury also found Boston Scientific engaged in fraud by failing to alert doctors to the devices’ faulty design. It awarded $25 million in compensatory damages and hit the company with a $75 million punitive-damages award.
The verdict is the largest so far against Boston Scientific over its vaginal-mesh inserts, eclipsing a $73 million award last year to a Texas woman over the company’s Obtryx sling. It ranks eighth among U.S. jury verdicts in 2015, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
It’s the first since Marlborough, Massachusetts-based Boston Scientific agreed last month to pay $119 million to resolve about 3,000 lawsuits over the devices in the first settlements of claims that the inserts damaged women’s organs and made sexual intercourse painful.
Appeal Planned
Kelly Leadem, a Boston Scientific spokeswoman, said the company disputes the conclusion that the inserts were flawed and caused Barba’s injuries.
“We disagree with the jury’s finding and intend to appeal based on the strength of our evidence,” she said in an e-mail.
The verdict is surprising because it came in Delaware, the most corporate-friendly state in the nation, Erik Gordon, a professor at the University of Michigan’s business and law schools who teaches classes on how drugs and medical devices are developed and regulated, said by e-mail.
“Corporation-friendly Delaware juries rarely award punitive damages,” Gordon said. “A good portion of Delaware’s economy is driven by its business of domiciling most of the country’s largest corporations.”
Delaware, the corporate home to more than half of the U.S.’s publicly traded companies and 63 percent of Fortune 500 firms, had more than 1 million legal entities incorporated in the 900,000-resident state by 2012, officials said.
‘Loudly, Clearly’
“The jury spoke loudly and clearly that Boston Scientific’s defective devices injured Mrs. Barba and many other women and they should step and take responsibility for causing that harm,” said Fred Thompson, one of her lawyers.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration ordered Boston Scientific, Johnson & Johnson and more than 30 other vaginal-implant makers in 2012 to study rates of organ damage and complications linked to the devices after the companies faced a wave of lawsuits over them.
Women such as Barba allege that inserts produced by Boston Scientific and other companies are made of substandard materials and shrink once they are implanted, causing organ damage and persistent pain. J&J moved in June 2012 to pull four lines of inserts off the market.
Many of the more than 70,000 mesh-insert cases have been consolidated before U.S. District Judge Joseph Goodwin in Charleston, West Virginia. Others have been filed in state courts in Delaware, New Jersey, Missouri, Texas and California.Settlement Talks
Goodwin has been pushing manufacturers to consider settling the cases before they face billions in jury awards.
Boston Scientific, C.R. Bard Inc. and other makers of vaginal inserts had talks two years ago about creating a global settlement of cases over the devices, according to people familiar with the discussions. J&J, which refused to participate in 2013 settlement talks, has now begun to settle some cases.
While Boston Scientific and Bard couldn’t agree on an overarching settlement program, both companies have begun to settle some individual suits and some lawyers’ inventories of cases.
Boston Scientific agreed to pay the $119 million to resolve nearly 3,000 cases collected by a group of plaintiffs’ lawyers led by Houston litigator David Matthews in April. The settlement provided an average payout of about $40,000 per case.
The company rose 37 cents, or 2 percent, to $18.36 at 3:26 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading.
The Delaware case is Barba v. Boston Scientific Corp., CA 11C-08-050-MMJ, Superior Court of Delaware (Wilmington).
(A previous version of this story corrected Barba’s age and the split between compensatory and punitive damages.)
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Boston Scientific ordered to pay $100 mln in transvaginal mesh trial
May 28, 2015 | Reuters
By Jessica Dye
n">A Delaware jury on Thursday ordered Boston Scientific to pay $100 million to a woman who said she was injured by transvaginal mesh, a device that is the subject of more than 25,000 lawsuits against the company.
Jurors awarded Deborah Barba $25 million in compensatory damages, and an additional $75 million in punitive damages, according to lawyers for Barba.
The 51-year old Newark, Delaware-resident was implanted with Boston Scientific's Pinnacle and Advantage Fit mesh products in 2009, to treat pelvic organ prolapse and stress urinary incontinence, according to her 2011 lawsuit. The devices caused serious complications, she said, and despite two subsequent surgeries to try to fix the problems, parts of the devices are still in her body, continuing to cause pain.
Following a two-week trial, jurors deliberated for about seven hours before finding Boston Scientific had been negligent in designing and making the devices and that it had failed to warn patients and doctors about potential risks.
Fidelma Fitzpatrick, one of Barba's lawyers, said Thursday that mesh complications had "profoundly changed" Barba's life, and that she hoped the size of the verdict would persuade Boston Scientific and other mesh makers to settle the remaining cases.
Thursday's verdict is the largest one yet in litigation over transvaginal mesh devices against Marlborough, Massachusetts-based Boston Scientific or any other mesh manufacturer. The company announced last month it had reached agreements to pay about $119 million to resolve 2,970 cases about transvaginal mesh.
The verdict is the sixth so far against the company by women who say that the devices are poorly designed and use subpar materials, resulting in painful physical injuries such as bleeding, infection and pain during sex. Boston Scientific has denied that the products are defective or that it failed to warn about potential complications.
Last year, Boston Scientific won the first two trials against it, before losing three in a row, including a $73.4 million verdict for a woman in Texas, which was later reduced to $34 million, and back-to-back trials involving groups of four women in West Virginia and Florida.
Boston Scientific did not immediately return requests for comment.
Boston Scientific is among seven manufacturers that collectively face an estimated 100,000 lawsuits over transvaginal mesh devices in U.S. federal and state courts. Other major defendants include Johnson & Johnson 's Ethicon unit, and C.R. Bard.
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Boston Scientific Hit With Record $100M Verdict In Mesh Case
May 28, 2015 | Law360
By Jody Godoy
A Delaware jury awarded $100 million to a woman who sued Boston Scientific Corp. over injuries from the company's pelvic mesh on Thursday in the biggest win yet over the medical implant that has elicited thousands of injury lawsuits.
Boston Scientific will have to pay plaintiff Deborah Barba $25 million in compensation and $75 million in punitive damages after the jury found in her favor for negligence, breach of warranty, fraud and Delaware consumer protection law claims over the medical device company's transvaginal mesh products.
"I would hope that this verdict would get the attention of the decision makers at Boston Scientific and that they would do the right thing by these women instead of forcing them to lay bare the most private parts of their lives in court," Fidelma Fitzpatrick of Motley Rice LLC, who represents Barba, told Law360.
Barba had surgery in May 2009 to implant the company's Advantage Fit and Pinnacle mesh products to treat pelvic organ prolapse and urinary incontinence. Afterwards, she suffered serious complications that required two surgeries, her attorneys say.
Barba initially sued the doctor who performed the procedure for malpractice in August 2011, but dropped those claims and instead filed suit against Boston Scientific in January 2012.
She accused the company of negligent product design, negligent manufacturing, failure to warn, breach of implied warranty of merchantability, fraud, fraud by concealment, violations of Delaware consumer protection law and loss of consortium.
The jury found in favor of Barba on all but the loss of consortium claim.
The plaintiff had initially alleged breach of express warranty and breach of implied warranty for a particular purpose, but dropped those claims before the jury trial.
"We strongly disagree with the jury's finding and intend to appeal based on the strength of our evidence," a Boston Scientific spokesperson told Law360 in a statement. "At Boston Scientific, patient safety is of the utmost importance and we dedicate significant resources to deliver safe, high-quality products."
In a motion for summary judgment just before the May trial, Boston Scientific argued that Barba had not adequately backed her claims.
The company said that it was not negligent in design of the products, as it had run them through a battery of tests to make sure they were functionally the same as earlier mesh products that had been proved safe and followed federal regulations regarding their design.
Boston Scientific had also argued the plaintiff failed to show a connection between alleged manufacturing defects and the harms she suffered.
On the failure to warn claim, the company said that it had adequately warned Barba's doctor, who had performed procedures using mesh products for more than 10 years.
According to Fitzpatrick, the award was the largest in a pelvic mesh case to date and the fourth verdict in a row for plaintiffs against Boston Scientific.
Fitzpatrick said her client was "brave" to take the stand on injuries of such a private nature and that Barba did so not only for herself but for other women who have been affected by allegedly defective vaginal mesh products.
According to Fitzpatrick, one of the defenses raised by Boston Scientific was a claim that Barba was injured because she had violated restrictions on lifting objects five weeks after her surgery.
"I don't think think these are cases where juries are inclined to be influenced by a blame-the-victim defense," Fitzpatrick said.
Counsel for Boston Scientific did not reply to requests for comment.
The plaintiff is represented by Fidelma Fitzpatrick and Fred Thompson of Motley Rice LLC and Philip T. Edwards of Murphy & Landon.
The defendant is represented by Colleen D. Shields of Eckert Seamans Cherin & Mellott LLC and Matthew D. Keenan and Eric Anielak of Shook Hardy & Bacon LLP.
The case is Deborah Barba v. Boston Scientific Corp., case number N11C-08-050 MMJ, in the Superior Court of the State of Delaware in New Castle County. -
Jury Hits Bos Sci with $100M Verdict for Faulty Transvaginal Meshes
May 28, 2015 | Medical Device and Diagnostic Industry
By Arundhati Parmar
A Delaware state court ordered Boston Scientific to pay $100 million to a woman hurt by its faulty transvaginal mesh products.
In its third-quarter earnings call last October, Boston Scientific's chief financial officer said that the company upped its legal reserves to $945 million, a $139 million increase from the second quarter of the year.
A development Thursday might lead the Marlborough, Massachusetts company to dip into that pot.
News reports surfaced that a Delaware jury ordered the company to pay $100 million to a plaintiff related to two transvaginal mesh products - the Advantage Fit and Pinnacle.
After the plaintiff Deborah Barba had pelvic organ prolapse and stress urinary incontinence, she was treated with these two products in May 2009, according to a news release from MotleyRice, the legal firm that represented her against Boston Scientific.
Immediately after she experiences complications and had to have two revision surgeries, but despite these portions of mesh remain inside of her, according to Motley Rice. The $100 million verdict included $75 million in punitive damages.
"The punitive damages the jury awarded in this verdict speak very boldly for themselves. With all the evidence we presented, the jury chose the damages according to the irresponsible behavior it thought Boston Scientific demonstrated. We are pleased that Boston Scientific may finally be receiving the message about the dangers of its transvaginal mesh where it hurts most, its wallet,” said Fred Thompson, a Motley Rice attorney in a statement.
A Boston Scientific spokeswoman responded that the company will be appealing the decision.
"We strongly disagree with the jury’s finding and intend to appeal based on the strength of our evidence," Kelly Leadem said in an email noting that the company takes patient safety very seriously and devotes significant resources to develop high-quality products.
In April, Boston Scientific announced that it would settle pay $119 million to settle 2,970 cases. That included a case in Texas where Boston Scientific was asked to pay $35 million and which it was appealing.
The FDA has stated that the most common complications that the agency received from patients who underwent the procedure include "mesh erosion through the vagina (also called exposure, extrusion or protrusion), pain, infection, bleeding, pain during sexual intercourse (dyspareunia), organ perforation, and urinary problems."
“I am thankful for the jury’s verdict and hope my story can help other women who are suffering from mesh complications to receive the resolution they deserve,” said Barb, the woman who received the $100 million verdict from the Delaware state court in a statement. “While difficult to share, I hope my case demonstrates to all mesh manufacturers the dangers of their products and the justice they owe victims.”
Coverage Thus Far
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