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| Boston Scientific's Obtryx II sling system--Courtesy of Boston Scientific |
Boston Scientific ($BSX) was dealt a crushing blow in its vaginal mesh saga, as a Texas state jury ordered the devicemaker to pay $73 million to a woman who claimed chronic pain and injury from the company's vaginal mesh implant.
As Bloomberg reports, jurors in a Texas state court in Dallas on Monday found that Boston Scientific's Obtryx sling was defectively designed and awarded plaintiff Martha Salazar $23 million in compensatory damages and $50 million in punitive damages. The implant, which helps control urine leakage, ended up causing Salazar a life-altering injury that required four major surgeries and continued to impair her day-to-day life, Salazar's attorney Dave Matthews said (as quoted by Bloomberg). Boston Scientific opposes the verdict and plans to appeal, company spokeswoman Kelly Leadem told the news outlet.
The verdict casts a dark cloud over the company's legal proceedings, as Boston Scientific still faces more than 20,000 lawsuits over its vaginal mesh products, including 12,000 cases consolidated before a federal district judge in West Virginia. The Marlborough, MA-based company won the first two cases that went to trial for its Obtryx sling, and the recent verdict marks the first award against the devicemaker since the beginning of the proceedings, Bloomberg reports.
The ruling also comes on the heels of Johnson & Johnson's ($JNJ) unfavorable verdict for its vaginal mesh product. Last week, a West Virginia federal jury ordered the company's Ethicon unit to pay $3.27 million to a woman who said the devicemaker's Gynecare TVT Obturator implant caused pelvic pain and injury. J&J plans to appeal and maintains that it acted "appropriately and responsibly in the research, development and marketing of the product," company spokesman Matthew Johnson said in a statement at the time of the ruling.
Meanwhile, other devicemakers such as C.R. Bard ($BCR), Endo Health Solutions ($ENDP) and Coloplast are wading through their own mesh-related claims. Last year, a U.S. district judge in West Virginia ordered Bard to fork over $2 million in damages in a suit alleging that the company's vaginal mesh implant did not function properly.
Endo and Coloplast have taken a different approach and agreed to settle a majority of their mesh lawsuits. Earlier this year, Coloplast paid $16 million to settle claims related to its vaginal mesh implants, spurring talk of a global resolution. In May, Endo followed suit and shelled out $830 million to settle 20,000 claims over vaginal mesh products sold by its American Medical Systems unit.
- read the Bloomberg story