A Texas judge cut a $73 million verdict recently awarded to a plaintiff in a transvaginal mesh lawsuit filed against Boston Scientific Corp. to $34 million. According to court documents dated October 2, Texas District Court Judge Ken Molberg cut the plaintiff’s punitive damage award to $11 million.
Among other things, Judge Molberg noted that Texas caps punitive damages at no more than two times a plaintiff’s economic losses, plus up to $750,000 in non-economic losses. (Salazar v. Lopez, No. DC-1214349, District Court for Dallas County, 95th Judicial District of Texas (Dallas).Last month, a jury ordered Boston Scientific to pay $23 million in compensatory damage plus $50 million in punitive damage to a woman who had been injured by the company’s Obtryx sling. Court records indicate that the Texas jury agreed with the plaintiff’s assertion that the pelvic mesh device was defectively designed, and that Boston Scientific’s handling of the product amounted to gross negligence.
“It’s important to understand that the punitive damage award was reduced simply as a matter of Texas law, and does not in any way reflect negatively on the jury’s findings. This remains a very significant verdict,” says Jeffrey S. Grand, partner in Bernstein Liebhard LLP, a law firm representing victims of defective drugs and medical devices. The firm continues to offer free legal reviews to women who suffered mesh erosion, pain, scarring, infection and other serious transvaginal mesh complications, allegedly due to products marketed by a number of manufacturers.
14,000 lawsuits
Boston Scientific is a defendant in more than 14,000 vaginal mesh lawsuits currently pending in U.S. courts. The majority of these claims have been filed in a federal multidistrict litigation now underway in U.S. District Court, Southern District of West Virginia, where attorney Grand, is serving on the Plaintiffs Steering Committee. (In re: Boston Scientific Corp., Pelvic Repair Systems Products Liability Litigation - MDL No. 2326)
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Grand was also appointed Co-Liaison Counsel in two consolidated proceedings established for C.R. Bard and Ethicon mesh lawsuits in New Jersey’s Atlantic Superior Court. He was also a member of the trial team on the first Ethicon trial, which ended in March 2013 with an $11 million verdict for the Plaintiff. (In re: Pelvic Mesh/Gynecare Litigation, No. 6341-10; In re: Pelvic Mesh Litigation/Bard, No. L-6339-10)
READER COMMENTS
Erik
on
It might make lawsuits viable for plaintiffs' lawyers, in certain cases, even if damages have been limited by the kind of tort reform described in this article.
In some cases, one party has done great and obvious wrong. But other times there is roughly equal blame on both sides. Sometimes the plaintiff has a bogus claim. And sometimes one or both sides should have been more willing to settle. The assigning of responsibility of litigation costs could be tailored to fit any of those kinds of cases.
Here’s an example of a special case where flexibility would have helped: I once was a juror in a bodily injury/pain case, in which the defendants admitted fault in a low speed car accident but disputed the claims about chronic pain. We jurors mostly doubted the plaintiffs’ story about the pain; it sounded like a fraudulent claim. But we awarded the plaintiffs a small fraction of their demanded compensation, just enough to pay for an initial doctor's exam done right after the accident. So we technically found in favor of the plaintiffs, even though we didn’t believe them and they essentially lost their case.
Neither the current American system nor "loser pays" seem flexible enough to handle cases like that one I participated in. We jurors might have been tempted to make the plaintiffs pay everyone's legal costs, had that been possible, as punishment for starting that stupid lawsuit!