U.S. District Judge Joseph Goodwin has scheduled the next joint status conference for the thousands of vaginal mesh lawsuits, all of which are hoping for settlements before the federal court system. Judge Goodwin is currently presiding over 70,000 vaginal mesh lawsuits, claiming that the defendants failed to protect them against the defects of their products.

Judge Goodwin issued the pretrial order on April 2, 2015, which stated that a joint status conference had been scheduled for June 2, 2015. The vaginal mesh plaintiff and defendant representatives with settlement authority, with the exception of Neomedic, have been ordered to appear. During this meeting, a series of individual meetings will be held in chambers with several defendants. Judge Goodwin has been presiding over this vaginal mesh litigation since October 2010, when all Bard Avaulta vaginal mesh lawsuits were centralized in West Virginia federal court.

Status of Vaginal Mesh Litigation

According to the latest case list that was released on March 16, 2015, Judge Goodwin is currently presiding over 3,569 Ethicon vaginal mesh lawsuits; 19,093 American Medical Systems (AMS) mesh lawsuits; 15,429, Boston Scientific mesh lawsuits; 10,525 Bard Avaulta mesh lawsuits; 1,870 Coloplast vaginal mesh lawsuits; 288 Cook Medical vaginal mesh lawsuits; and 83 Neomedic vaginal mesh lawsuits. Each of the claimants are hoping to get their case resolved in a quick and efficient manner. As with most MDLs, these vaginal mesh lawsuits allege similar claims of mesh injuries that were allegedly caused by vaginal mesh and bladder sling products.

Overview of Vaginal Mesh Litigation

While the defendants have had some success in defending themselves in these vaginal mesh lawsuits, most of the cases have resulted in millions of dollars in damage awards for the plaintiffs. Oftentimes the jury and presiding judge find the defendants at fault for developing and selling defective products. Despite the amount of successful jury awards, there has been little progression in reaching a larger number of vaginal mesh settlements. Currently, only AMS has settled the majority of vaginal mesh lawsuits against them, paying approximately $1.6 billion to resolve over 20,000 claims. Judge Goodwin has expressed his frustration on this lack of progress several times before, due to the reported little effort the defendants have made toward settling these vaginal mesh lawsuits.

Judge Goodwin states that the legal system would be overwhelmed if they had to oversee every single vaginal mesh lawsuit in this MDL. The efficiency of the MDL stems from the fact that it consolidates a bunch of similar lawsuits under one judge, due to the similar nature of the allegations. This allows the presiding judge to gauge how juries may react to certain evidence that is bound to be repeated, for the cases to be quickly processed through the legal system, and prevents conflicting rulings from different judges.

As part of the pretrial proceedings, several bellwether trials have been held, representing the numerous similar claims made against the manufacturing companies. Earlier this year, Judge Goodwin held a joint status conference to push vaginal mesh manufacturers to start settlement discussions. If the parties are not able to reach agreement for settlement terms, Judge Goodwin is predicted to start remanding these vaginal mesh lawsuits back to the original courts for their individual trial dates, which would not be an ideal outcome for reasons indicated earlier.

Each of the plaintiffs had vaginal mesh implanted to treat either their pelvic organ prolapse (POP) or stress urinary incontinence (SUI). Instead of resolving these personal health problems in a discreet manner, the conditions were allegedly worsened and the vaginal mesh had to be removed through surgeries. The injuries plaintiffs complained of suffering include mesh erosion, when the mesh actually eroded through the vaginal and caused debilitating internal damage.