Last Friday, a three-judge panel from the Third Circuit restored a lawsuit filed by a Louisiana man who alleged LivaNova’s 3T Heater-Cooler System for contracting bacterial infections during open-heart surgery.
The federal appellate panel reinstated the previously dismissed lawsuit by the Pennsylvania federal court ruling that it should not be dismissed on the basis that the plaintiff did not respond timely to a multidistrict litigation (MDL) court’s Lone Pine order.
In 2017, the plaintiff underwent heart surgery in Louisiana using a 3T device, following which he was infected and the doctors believed that it was an NTM infection. Patients who had a similar surgery using the device in the same hospital were reported to have caught the infection.
The lawsuit filed against LivaNova Holding USA Inc., earlier known as Sorin Group USA, was dismissed last year by the lower court stating that the plaintiff had no proof that he suffered from nontuberculous mycobacterium (NTM) infection, which is required as part of a case management order in the MDL.
According to the April 9 precedential opinion, the appellate panel said that the claims might be viable under the Louisiana Products Liability Act. and hence the MDL court should have allowed the transferor court to hear the case.
The panel termed the dismissal an abuse of discretion and further added that the lower court deprived the plaintiff of the opportunity to litigate his suit in any venue without consideration of how it might fare outside the MDL context.
The opinion also noted that the plaintiff might be able to make a case in Louisiana, where the lawsuit was filed initially, and the panel asked the lower court to suggest to the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML) to send the case to Eastern Louisiana federal court.
