A Florida federal judge recently denied a motion to dismiss filed by C. R. Bard, Inc., in an IVC filter lawsuit. The judge dismissed a failure-to-warn claim, but allowed the Bard IVC lawsuit to proceed on the grounds of defective design. According to the court order, the judge found that the plaintiff may be able to convince a jury that the Bard inferior vena cava filter was defectively designed.
This is just one of dozens of IVC filter lawsuits brought against the medical device manufacturer for injuries allegedly caused by Bard Recovery and G2 IVC filters. Numerous studies have shown that pieces of IVC filters, and sometimes entire devices, can break away and become lodged in vital organs, such as the heart and lungs.
Plaintiffs injured by failed Bard IVC filters have stepped forward and filed Bard IVC filter lawsuits. Currently, plaintiffs are trying to have federal Bard IVC lawsuits consolidated by the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation. The litigation would initially include at least 25 Bard IVC filter lawsuits filed in 22 federal jurisdictions, and that number is expected to increase.
Some Bard IVC filter lawsuits have already gone to trial. Earlier this year, Lopez McHugh succeeded in securing compensation for a plaintiff in the second Bard IVC filter lawsuit in the nation to go to trial. Earlier this month, a Nevada federal judge denied the company’s request to seal certain court documents relating to a 2012 Bard IVC filter lawsuit.
While the Florida judge did award Bard summary judgment on the failure-to-warn claim, he noted that Bard failed “to address whether the G2 filter was as safe as current testing and research permitted or whether its benefits outweighed its known risks—and, as plaintiffs contend, the evidence reveals that the G2 filter was far from being as safe as it could have been made.” The judge also stated that there is “evidence that, despite possessing this information, Bard failed to properly test and/or redesign the G2 filter to resolve its recognized propensity to fail. And there is evidence that Bard continued to market and sell the G2 filter despite failing to adequately address these known issues.”