Doctor sitting in front of a gavel and block
November 10, 2023

$500,000 Verdict Awarded in C.R. Bard Bellwether Trial.

The Decision

C.R. Bard’s third bellwether trial came to a close in an Ohio federal court on Wednesday, November 8 with $500,000 awarded to Maine resident Aaron Stinson. The plaintiff claimed he was injured because C.R. Bard failed to warn him about the health risks associated with one of its recalled hernia mesh products, the PerFix Plug.

Out of the plaintiff’s five claims, the Ohio jury only ruled in favor of three of them: negligence, failure to warn, and strict liability for failure to warn. The court did not agree with his claim that a design defect of the PerFix Plug caused his injury, nor the claim that C.R. Bard and Davol acted with negligence regarding said design defect.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE PERFIX PLUG?

Though C.R. Bard’s PerFix Plug has not ever been recalled by the FDA, the hernia mesh product has been involved in several thousand claims of the hernia mesh lawsuit. The PerFix Plug is not necessarily unique in its design, and it causes frequent medical complications for the same reason as many other hernia mesh products do: the plastic used to construct it.

Like most of the hernia mesh products currently on the market, the PerFix Plug is made with polypropylene, one of the cheapest and most widely-used plastics in the world. Though this type of plastic is completely stable and non-toxic to humans, polypropylene has a tendency to shrink, shift inside the body, and erode over time. These characteristics have been found to occasionally cause severe medical complications to arise after hernia repair surgery, including infection, organ adhesion, bowel obstruction, chronic pain, punctured tissue or organs, and other medical issues.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

C.R. Bard and its subsidiary, the Davol Company, have now lost all three of their bellwether trials connected to the hernia mesh lawsuit thus far. Similarly to how previous losses in court have been handled, C.R. Bard will very likely attempt to appeal the $500,000 verdict. A fourth bellwether trial against the holding company will be expected to begin in January 2024.

Of the four active multidistrict litigations (MDLs) that comprise the hernia mesh lawsuit, the C.R. Bard MDL is by far the largest with over 20,000 open cases. Across all four MDLs— C.R. Bard, Atrium, Covidien, and Ethicon— there are currently over 25,000 pending cases waiting to be settled.

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