Jury Awards $3.27 Million Against Maker of Defective Medical Device, More to Come

Earlier this month, a jury in West Virginia handed down a $3.27 million verdict against medical device maker Ethicon, inc., a division of Johnson & Johnson. The plaintiff in Huskey v. Ethicon had been implanted with a pelvic mesh to treat stress urinary incontinence. The jury found Ethicon guilty of manufacturing a defective medical device and failing to warn about adverse side effects such as infection, bleeding and pain. The jury awarded the plaintiff $100,000 in medical costs, $200,000 for loss of consortium with her husband, $470,000 for past pain and suffering and mental anguish, and $2.5 million for future pain and suffering, mental anguish, disability, and loss of enjoyment of life.

This case is only one of 22,000 cases against Ethicon in the United States District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia, and only one of 66,000 cases total in the court against Ethicon and six other pelvic mesh manufacturers. These cases have been consolidated and transferred from all over the country to the Southern District of West Virginia by the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation, or MDL, but there are still thousands of other cases active in state courts around the country as well.

The recent case of Huskey v. Ethicon was one of several MDL "bellwether" trials being conducted by the court. The idea is that as more of these key cases are decided, the parties in the thousands of other cases will be able to reach a settlement based on the outcomes of those trials without having to litigate all the cases individually. Already, one of the device manufacturers, American Medical Systems of Endo International, has agreed to settle the roughly 20,000 cases against it for a total of $830 million.