The manufacturers of inferior vena cava (IVC) filter medical devices are facing several IVC filter lawsuits for the alleged design defects that have reportedly injured numerous patients.

At the end of July, the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML) was getting ready to hear oral arguments for and against the centralization of all IVC filter lawsuits filed against C.R. Bard.

Similarly, recent reports suggest that over 100 similar IVC filter lawsuits name Cook Medical as a defendant for manufacturing defective IVC filter medical devices.

What are IVC Filters?

IVC filters are small medical devices implanted in patients who are considered to be at high risk of a blood clot related adverse effect, such as a pulmonary embolism.

The cage-like filters are designed to be implanted into the body to catch would-be blood clots that develop and break off from deep veins, thereby stopping these clots from traveling to a person’s lungs.

Some common complications experienced by patients implanted with IVC filter devices include:

• IVC thrombosis
• Deep vein thrombosis (DVT)
• Access site thrombosis
• Filter migration
• Caval penetration
• IVC filter fracture

While an IVC filter could potentially save a person’s life, or at the very least avoid serious injury, adverse event reports and IVC filter lawsuits point to a problem with these IVC filters that have caused patients to experience serious complications.

As a result, many patients have filed IVC filter lawsuits against medical manufacturers such as Bard and Cook Medical.

IVC Filter Litigation

At the end of July, the JPML was considering the merits of a motion to consolidate all Bard IVC filter lawsuits before one judge in a multidistrict litigation (MDL).

This has already been done with all Cook IVC filter lawsuits, which were consolidated into an IVC filter MDL on October 2014 before U.S. District Judge Richard L. Young.

An MDL is a litigation process that allows for the consolidation of multiple lawsuits that raise similar issues about the same company or similar products.

MDLs generally reduce the chance of duplicative discovery in regards to common issues raised by multiple plaintiffs, as well as help to avoid the possibility of conflicting pretrial rulings from different courts.

When the Cook IVC filter MDL was established last year, about 32 lawsuits had been filed over the company’s allegedly faulty medical device. As previously stated, this number has grown and as of mid-July, there are 102 Cook IVC filter lawsuits pending before Judge Young in an Indiana federal court.

The JPML has yet to make a decision regarding transfer of all Bard Recovery IVC filter lawsuits and Bard G2 IVC filter lawsuits to a multidistrict before one judge to facilitate coordinated discovery and pretrial litigation proceedings.

Bard opposes creating an MDL, but plaintiffs have argued that the number of IVC filter lawsuits is expected to grow exponentially over the next few months and even years.

It has been estimated that if the problem is as prevalent as believed by the patients, then the Bard IVC filter litigation could include thousands of similar lawsuits against the medical device manufacturer.