Boston Scientific (NYSE:BSX) wants some 700 product liability lawsuits filed over its pelvic mesh products removed from a Philadelphia court to the federal court in West Virginia that’s overseeing the multi-district litigation involving Boston and several other pelvic mesh makers.
A year and a day ago Judge Arnold New, director of the Complex Litigation Center at the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, ordered that "all currently filed pelvic mesh matters shall be transferred to the Complex Litigation Center Pelvic Mesh Mass Tort Program" for coordination.
But Boston Scientific, which said in a court filing that it’s facing more than 15,000 cases in the West Virginia MDL, wants the cases against it in the Philly court removed to the U.S. District Court for Southern West Virginia under Judge Joseph Goodwin, according to notices of removal filed Feb. 10 in a Pennsylvania federal court.
"There are thousands of similar cases pending in the MDL in the Southern District of West Virginia in which plaintiffs have met the minimum amount-in-controversy such that a general court can exercise diversity jurisdiction over those cases," the company argued, according to court documents.
Companies including Boston Scientific, C.R. Bard (NYSE:BCR) and Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) subsidiary Ethicon are facing thousands of product liability and personal injury lawsuits over their respective pelvic mesh devices.
In August 2014, New dismissed Secant Medical from the Philly mass tort, ruling that Pennsylvania state law shields Secant from the lawsuits because it only made a component of the larger companies’ transvaginal mesh products, according to court documents.
Last September, New ruled that the companies in the Philly mass tort would have to challenge the lawsuits on a case-by-case basis, dismissing joint motions to toss all of the lawsuits en masse.
