Hundreds of CPAP machine lawsuits have been filed since medical device company Philips recalled millions of sleep apnea machines after discovering that they were causing users to inhale toxic foam particles. Our CPAP lawyers are handling these lawsuits in all 50 states.
Thousands of additional CPAP recall lawsuits are expected to be filed against Philips and consolidated into a new class-action MDL.
Within the past year, many lawsuits have been filed against Teva Pharmaceuticals. These Paragard IUD lawsuits allege that suits allege that Teva’s IUD fractures upon removal, resulting in fragments being left in the uterus. The plaintiffs claimed this caused them to undergo additional removal procedures, which would have been unnecessary had this defect not occurred. The purpose of this page is to provide a status update on the current state of the Paragard lawsuits as of late January 2021. Other Paragard law firms and websites are providing updates on this litigation, and I would encourage you to follow them here, here, and here.
Certainly, the biggest news in the short history of this litigation was last month when these lawsuits were centralized into an MDL in Georgia federal court. This means there will be a class action in which all federal court cases will be consolidated in Georgia under one judge. So if you have a federal case in California, Texas, Florida, or anywhere, it will end up.
Let’s start out by talking about some of the science behind these cases. Usually, what fuels litigation is that studies come out and lawyers jump on these studies to bring lawsuits. In this litigation, it might be a little bit backward. It took a while for plaintiffs’ lawyers to pick up on the problems with Paragard. Now a new study this year further supports the contention Paragard lawyers are making.
Our DreamStation CPAP recall lawyers are currently seeking new cases from individuals who used one of the recalled DreamStation devices and suffered health consequences related to the inhalation of chemicals from the device.
If you used a Philips DreamStation, DreamStation Go, or another recalled CPAP machine for 6 months or longer and have suffered cancer or other negative health consequences, you may be entitled to compensation.
What led to this recall and DreamStation lawsuits? A few weeks ago, Philips Respironics announced it was recalling all of its popular DreamStation sleep apnea machines because they may cause users to unknowingly inhale toxic, potentially carcinogenic chemicals
This page is about the Bair Hugger lawsuits that were filed claiming the product caused infections. But these suits did not go very far and I don’t know of any lawyers filing warning blanket lawsuits in 2021. Not all mass tort lawsuits work out and these Bair Hugger lawsuits certainly did not.
Let’s back up first to the start of this litigation. I’m backfilling this first the original post…
As of September 2018, there are over 1,500 Bair Hugger warming blanket lawsuits pending in the MDL in Minnesota.
In one typical case, a New York couple claims that a surgical warming blanket used after the husband’s hip replacement operation caused severe infections, resulting in four additional surgeries. A man and his wife filed a lawsuit in New York on Nov. 25, 2015, against 3M, the manufacturer of the Bair Hugger forced-air warming system. Medical facilities commonly use this blanket during knee and hip replacement operations. In addition to 3M, the lawsuit lists Arizant Healthcare, Inc. and its subsidiaries as Defendants.
The value of surgical blanket lawsuits is still being determined, but many of these infection cases involve serious injury and death.
During the surgery on Oct. 24, 2012, medical personnel used a Bair Hugger on the man’s left hip, supposedly to help regulate body temperature. However, the warming blanket might have introduced bacteria into the surgical site, resulting in infection. Plaintiff received five surgeries within 16 months, including the original surgery, and he now struggles with mobility and needs crutches to walk.
Per the lawsuit: “Due to the infection, Plaintiff needed four additional surgical procedures to remove the implant and clean the infected area within sixteen months from the original implant surgery, and he continues to suffer limited mobility, requiring crutches to ambulate.”
According to diverse news reports, this Plaintiff is far from alone; many consumers across the nation have taken legal action after illnesses they’ve acquired after using the Bair Hugger, following hip and knee surgeries.
The Plaintiffs noted that 3M sent a letter to the FDA way back in June 1997, which warned of possible contamination issues with this product.
It is hard to make sense of the Fresenius dialysis debacle. People have been hurt – the most vulnerable among us – and it could have been so easily prevented. What I try to do below is lay out what happened and explain what I believe the future of these lawsuits to be.
Fresenius Medical Care is the nation’s largest provider of dialysis treatments, with over 130,000 patients. Their dialysis facilities use GranuFlo and NaturaLyte acid dissolution products in treatments, which are products created by Fresenius. Countless non-Fresenius dialysis centers also use those products, which are sold by Fresenius. Defects in those products are terrifying not only because of the harm they could cause but because Fresenius has such a ridiculously high market share. This is not a product people want, it is a product they absolutely need.
Stryker hip replacement lawsuits are being settled in massive numbers, but more are being filed. Seven new plaintiffs have filed hip replacement lawsuits in New Jersey state court claiming injury from a defective Rejuvenate metal hip replacement system, which was recalled in July.
The plaintiffs live in Minnesota, Arizona, and Florida but filed their lawsuits in New Jersey. Because Stryker is in New Jersey, there is no diversity jurisdiction which is why these plaintiffs are traveling to get to New Jersey. This practice drives Stryker crazy, and I can’t entirely say that I blame them. But if you meet the right criteria, these are good cases and most of them will reach a reasonable settlement.
Biomet metal hip implants include the M2A Magnum, which is a medical device that we believe is connected to serious problems like blood poisoning and serious malfunction. Like other types of metal-on-metal hip implants, studies and research are showing how dangerous Biomet’s hip implant is, and we’ve concluded that, like other metal hip implants, it is defective.
These hip implants have two components, easily thought of as the ball and the cup. The metal cup rests in the pelvis at the hip, and the ball rests in the cup and is attached to the upper leg bone. The problem with these hip implants is that, as the leg moves, the metal parts grind away at each other. This causes metal bits to shave off and to fall into the surrounding tissue, and sometimes into the patient’s bloodstream. Metal poisoning of the blood is called metallosis. When the metal gets into the body, it can cause irritation, inflammation, and pain. In addition, the wearing away of the metal causes the Biomet hip implants to fail at a very high rate, so patients will require a second hip replacement surgery.
The Biomet injury lawyers have requested that all cases filed in federal courts be grouped together before one federal judge, who will then steer and guide these cases, hopefully to Biomet metal hip implant settlements. When they first filed the request in MDL 2391, there were about eight Biomet lawsuits. That number has multiplied, and now there are approximately forty cases.
The plaintiffs’ lawyers will meet in New York City on September 20, 2012 (see the hearing schedule), where the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation will have a hearing to help decide whether to group these cases together. That’s about a month away, and additional Biomet hip implant lawsuits will be filed before then, which will increase the chances of combining these cases.
Biomet has filed an opposition and is resisting the MDL. They give the usual reasons, claiming that each case is unique, and it will be difficult to group them together. However, from past experience, we know that the cases have substantial similarities, and could benefit from group management. Interestingly, one other reason given by Biomet is that some Magnum hip implant cases have been settled already, and other cases are moving toward resolution. This is almost an admission that the metal hip implants are defective.
This is the interesting story of a woman who scheduled to speak today to an FDA advisory panel hearing looking into the problems of metal-on-metal hip replacement systems. The woman’s husband has a hip implant and is one of the thousands of plaintiffs who have sued Johnson & Johnson’s DePuy Orthopedics division, claiming its metal-on-metal ASR hip system was defective.
Though widely hailed as breakthrough medical devices when they first came onto the market, experts now recommend that patients avoid them. The onslaught of problems (which seems to span all metal hip implants, regardless of manufacturer) is one reason that Johnson & Johnson has been phasing out their DePuy ASR implants. Of course, the phase-out allows a manufacturer to retire a device gracefully, despite the fact that a full-blown hip implant recall is warranted in these cases.
What did Johnson & Johnson (DePuy) Do Wrong To Cause Hip Implant Injuries?
As the authors of the British Medical Journal, The Lancet, said, the problems with metal hip implants that surgeons have discovered, could have been determined with adequate pre-market studies and regulation. If Johnson & Johnson did their homework, there would be a lot fewer people with these hip implant problems. The reality, though, is that a medical device manufacturer always makes more money by sending a defective device to the market than they do by canceling a project.
In 2009, the FDA told Johnson & Johnson that it was rejecting the DePuy ASR hip resurfacing system. That letter went one step further by telling Johnson & Johnson that all the DePuy metal-on-metal implants were suspect because of metal poisoning problems (See Hip Device Phaseout Followed FDA Data Request, New York Times). Regardless, these implants are still being implanted into patients.
Drug Recall Lawyer Blog