By Jef Feeley & Phil Milford -
Aug 15, 2013 2:51 PM CT
C.R. Bard Inc. (BCR) should
pay $250,000 to a woman who sued saying she suffered injuries from the
company’s vaginal-mesh implant, a jury found.
The first
federal-court trial of more than 5,000 claims over the devices now
moves to the punitive-damages phase in Charleston, West Virginia.
Jurors deliberated about 12 hours over two days
before finding Murray Hill,
New Jersey-based Bard liable today for injuries that Donna Cisson blamed on its
Avaulta line of devices.
Patients claim the implants cause organ damage and
make sexual intercourse painful when they erode. Johnson &
Johnson (JNJ), Endo Health
Solutions Inc. (ENDP)-formerly American Medical Systems- and Boston Scientific Corp. (BSX)
face similar claims that their implants, threaded in place through incisions,
degrade and shrink over time.
Cisson’s first trial, in July, ended in a mistrial
after a witness began testifying about the devices’ marketing and removal from
the market. U.S. District Judge Joseph Goodwin ruled earlier that plaintiffs couldn’t mention that
Bard had withdrawn the products.
Scott Lowry, a Bard spokesman, wasn’t immediately
available at his New Jersey office to comment on the verdict.
The Bard consolidated cases are In re C.R. Bard
Inc. Pelvic Repair System Products Liability Litigation, 10-md-02187, and
Cisson’s case is Cisson v. C.R. Bard Inc., 11-cv-00195, U.S. District Court,
Southern District of West Virginia
(Charleston).
To contact the reporters on this story: Jef Feeley
in federal court in Charleston, West Virginia, at jfeeley@bloomberg.net; Phil Milford in
Wilmington, Delaware,
at pmilford@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Hytha at mhytha@bloomberg.net.
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