During the month of July, the hernia mesh lawsuit achieved a notable milestone by reaching over 20,000 individual cases in the federal multidistrict litigation (MDL) against medical device subsidiary C.R. Bard and its parent company, Becton, Dickinson and Company (BD).
Currently, there are two multidistrict litigations (MDLs) for the incoming hernia mesh lawsuits against C.R. Bard to be funneled into. There is a federal MDL in Ohio, and a state MDL in Rhode Island. The federal MDL has received the bulk of the hernia mesh lawsuits against C.R. Bard, but the state-wide Rhode Island MDL has acquired several thousand of its own claims.
Armed with over 20,000 claims, the federal C.R. Bard hernia mesh MDL is one of the largest MDLs in America today, surpassing prominent lawsuits against major, commonly-known products like Prilosec, Paraquat, and Zantac.
There are also separate federal MDLs against other hernia mesh manufacturers, such as Atrium Medical Corporation and Covidien, that have been steadily gaining traction. The Atrium C-Qur Mesh MDL acquired over 2,500 lawsuits, and the Covidien MDL recently surpassed over 1,000 claims.
Recap of previous hernia mesh verdicts and settlements
Though there haven’t been many trials within any of the active MDLs since the lawsuit began, multiple hernia mesh manufacturers have quietly settled some of their ongoing cases.
In 2011, the settlement that started it all, C.R. Bard settled around 2,600 lawsuits against its Kugel hernia patch for $184 million. This settlement came a few years after an FDA issued a recall against the Kugel hernia patch in 2005.
Then, in 2021, Atrium and Ethicon both resolved some of their lawsuits with their own confidential settlement agreements. Based on reporting from Drugwatch, the Atrium settlement was worth around $66 million. The same year as these settlements were reached, the first verdict against C.R. Bard in the federal hernia mesh MDL was decided. The jury awarded $255,000 to a man who suffered complications with his Ventralex Hernia Patch.
Finally, in 2022, the hernia mesh lawsuit was rocked by its first major verdict: $4.8 million to a Hawaiian man who also suffered from medical complications with his Ventralex Hernia Patch. This was the bombshell that changed the future of the hernia mesh lawsuit. Current plaintiffs are now waiting to see if they could be the next person to win big in court.
With the hernia mesh lawsuit steadily heating up, now is the perfect time to file a claim against hernia mesh manufacturers like C.R. Bard and Atrium. If you or an immediate family member received a defective hernia mesh implant and had to go back to your doctor for a follow-up revision surgery to resolve medical complications, see if you qualify to join the lawsuit.