U.S. District Judge Edmund A. Sargus, presiding over all Bard hernia mesh lawsuits, indicated that the number of cases against the manufacturer would likely be at least 10,000 before the first bellwether trial that is scheduled for January 2021.
Judge Sargus noted the rise in a pretrial order issued on August 14 and indicated that the first bellwether trial, currently scheduled to begin on January 11, 2021, may be rescheduled as the court has another case scheduled for February 2021, which may impact the ability to start the bellwether trial as planned.
The lawsuit that will be the first to go before a jury alleges that the plaintiff experienced complications with Bard Ventralight ST mesh, a type of polypropylene patch involved largely in other claims pending in the litigation. The trial, which was originally scheduled to begin in May 2020, has been pushed back from September 2020 to January 2021 due to the interruptions caused by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic crisis.
The mesh products named in the lawsuits contain polypropylene material, which can easily break, shrink or wear off. This often leads to device migration, organ perforation, infection, and several other complications. Lawsuits allege the defective design of the hernia mesh often required the patients to undergo additional correction surgeries.
Currently, C.R. Bard faces more than 8,000 product liability lawsuits over hernia mesh products, which include Bard’s Ventralex, Ventralight, Perfix, 3DMax, and other patch designs. Bard hernia mesh claims are consolidated under federal multidistrict litigation (MDL) No. 2846 in the Southern District of Ohio, presided by Honorable Edmund A. Sargus, Jr., and Honorable Kimberly A. Jolson.
