Appeals court upholds $3m verdict against J&J’s Ethicon in pelvic mesh case

A federal appeals court yesterday upheld a $3.3 million verdict against Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) subsidiary Ethicon in a product liability lawsuit brought over its TVT-O pelvic mesh.

A jury in the U.S. District Court for Southern West Virginia awarded Jo Huskey and her husband damages of $3.3 million, finding in September 2014 that the TVT-O transvaginal sling caused her injuries and that the company failed to warn about the stress urinary incontinence treatment’s risks. A federal judge later shot down Ethicon’s bid to overturn the verdict and denied the company’s move for a new trial; Ethicon then appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit.

Yesterday a 3-judge panel at the 4th Circuit denied the appeal, ruling that the Huskeys proved their case.

“The record belies Ethicon’s assertion that the Huskeys failed to prove that a specific defect of the TVT-O’s design caused harm to Mrs. Huskey. As the district court properly held, the Huskeys offered sufficient evidence for a reasonable jury to find that Ethicon’s use of heavyweight polypropylene mesh in the TVT-O caused Mrs. Huskey’s injuries,” Judge Diana Gribbon Motz wrote. “Drawing all inferences in the Huskeys’ favor, a reasonable jury could conclude from this expert testimony that Ethicon’s use of a heavyweight quantity of polypropylene mesh in the TVT-O constituted a design defect that caused Mrs. Huskey’s inflammation and pelvic pain.”

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