Product News and Recalls

FL Judge Allows New Testimony in Bard IVC Filter Lawsuit

judge allows new plaintiff's testimony in Bard IVC filter caseA Florida judge will allow plaintiffs in a Bard G2 IVC filter lawsuit to present expert testimony about fracturing and dislocation of the device. However, according to information on Harris Martin’s website, the judge will exclude opinions about the adequacy of the testing, design, manufacture, and labeling of Bard’s G2 filter.

IVC filters such as Bard’s G2 filter have been in use for roughly 50 years, with an estimated 100,000 devices implanted. IVC filters are designed to prevent blood clots from forming and travelling throughout the body, which can cause strokes and other life-threatening complications. However, the devices allegedly have unexpectedly high failure rates. Numerous studies have found that pieces of IVC filters, and sometimes entire devices, can break away and become lodged in vital organs like the heart and lungs.

Plaintiffs in Bard IVC filter lawsuits allege that as early as 2003, Bard knew that its Recovery IVC filter posed an unacceptably high risk of injury due to splintering or dislocation. Bard reportedly did not inform the FDA of this unreasonable risk, and kept its dangerous IVC filter on the market until 2005, when the company released its new G2 filter. Since then, 921 reports of adverse events have been registered with the FDA, many of which involve death.

Earlier this year, Lopez McHugh successfully represented a plaintiff in the second Bard IVC filter lawsuit in the nation to proceed to trial. Lopez McHugh lawyers provided evidence that Bard knew of the unreasonable risk its IVC filters posed yet continued to market and distribute the device, fraudulently advertising the safety and efficacy of its filter, and endangering the lives of those in whom they were implanted.

A recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association revealed that retrievable IVC filters may in fact confer “no benefit in terms of pulmonary embolism recurrence or mortality”. If this is confirmed to be true, plaintiffs who have already stepped forward in Bard IVC filter lawsuits will have another argument that Bard misrepresented the IVC filter risk verus benefit tradeoff.