West Virginia Judge Stands By C.R. Bard Transvaginal Mesh Verdict from 2013

Published on January 23, 2015 by Sandy Liebhard

A C.R. Bard transvaginal mesh verdict reached a year and a half ago will stand, a West Virginia judge said in a decision last week to deny the device manufacturer a new trial.

In documents issued on January 20th in the U.S. District Court, Southern District of West Virginia, it was decided that the company did not prove a miscarriage of justice in its request for a new hearing of the transvaginal mesh lawsuit. The case was originally filed by a woman who sustained serious injuries due to the company’s pelvic implants, for which she received $1.75 million in punitive damages and $250,000 in compensatory damages in August 2013.

Transvaginal Mesh Plaintiffs Still Ordered to Pay Georgia Punitive Damages

In his decision to stick by this decision, the U.S. District Judge presiding over C.R. Bard mesh lawsuits in West Virginia also stood by a provision in Georgia’s Tort Reform Act of 1987 that requires plaintiffs to pay the state 75 percent of their punitive damages. The law applies in this case because it was originally filed in Georgia before being transferred to the West Virginia MDL in March 2011.

In the mesh lawsuit’s original trial, the Court excluded certain evidence related to C.R. Bard’s compliance with a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) rule that companies must provide the agency 90 days of notice before they plan to release a new product. The judge said recently that the Court was not wrong in excluding this information, as it has nothing to do with whether the company’s implants were safe and effective.

At the time of its original trial, this transvaginal mesh case was the first to be heard out of seven multidistrict litigations in West Virginia. These litigations together now include more than 60,000 lawsuits that allege mesh erosion, pain, pain during sexual intercourse and other complications that are serious and may severely diminish a woman’s overall quality of life.

As of January 15, 2015, a federal case list update shows more than 10,000 transvaginal mesh lawsuits in the federal C.R. Bard litigation underway in the Southern District of West Virginia. These cases allege the company’s failure to adequately warn about complications that may stem from use of their mesh implants.