The C.R. Bard unit of BD (NYSE:BDX) was ordered to pay $4.8 million in a lawsuit related to its hernia mesh, Reuters reports.
The news agency said the company must pay nearly $5 million in a lawsuit brought by a Hawaii man who said he suffered serious complications from the implanted hernia repair mesh. BD will appeal the decision, a spokesperson told Reuters.
Paul Trevino and his wife, Earlynn, alleged in a 2018 lawsuit that the Ventralex hernia repair mesh from BD’s Bard business dug into his tissue, causing pain and inflammation while eventually leading to required corrective surgery, according to the report.
A Rhode Island jury handed down the verdict following a month-long trial, Reuters said. BD faces more than 30,000 lawsuits of a similar kind related to hernia mesh devices.
Mesh devices have been the subject of legal challenges over the years, proving to potentially be one of medtech’s greatest modern failures. Pelvic mesh products in particular have caused a lot of trouble. In 2020, BD agreed to pay $60 million to 48 U.S. states to resolve allegations that its C.R. Bard business deceptively marketed transvaginal surgical mesh devices.
The court later reduced the size of the civil penalties against J&J’s Ethicon subsidiary by $42 million. The reasoning was that Ethicon couldn’t be fined over oral communications because there was no evidence of what its employees actually said in one-on-one communications with doctors.
