A New Jersey Supreme Court might consolidate hernia mesh lawsuits against Johnson & Johnson and its Ethicon USA LLC subsidiary.

Lawyers representing 62 plaintiffs filed an application to designate the hernia mesh lawsuits as a multicounty litigation and requested assignment to Superior Court Judge Rachelle Lea Harz.

Six hernia mesh lawsuits already have been assigned to Judge Harz, who oversees all multicounty litigation in Bergen County.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs indicated that Judge Harz presides over pelvic mesh lawsuits that tend to have “overlapping science and the same defendants.”

“Judge Harz has presided over the pelvic mesh litigation since it was re-assigned to her in August 2016, and since that time has issued over 300 orders, conducted numerous conferences, and has shown a remarkable understanding of the complex scientific issues of pelvic mesh, and their intrinsic interrelationship to the legal issues,” said the plaintiffs’ lawyers.

The hernia mesh lawsuits include many of the same scientific and legal aspects, they added.

Hernia Mesh Lawsuits’ Commonalities

The hernia mesh lawsuits allege defects with several products designed to secure hernia repair procedures. The Proceed Surgical Mesh, Proceed Ventral Patch, Ethicon Physiomesh Flexible Composite Mesh, Prolene 3D Patch Polypropylene Mesh, and Prolene Hernia System are among the named products in the hernia mesh lawsuits.

The application to combine the hernia mesh lawsuits into an MCL indicates the mesh products “feature one or more deviations from an uncoated, two-dimensional polypropylene mesh design.”

The application asserts that the deviations resulted in a higher rate of serious complications because even though the deviations made implantation of the mesh faster and easier, the changes allegedly failed to make the mesh safer.

“There are many common, recurrent issues of law and fact that are associated with this class of products. These products share common defendants (and likely the same corporate witnesses), designs, materials, manufacturing and production methods, and underlying science,” says the application for the MCL.

The MCL application goes on to add, “Additionally, there is geographical dispersion of the parties (as these products were sold throughout the nation), a high degree of commonality of injury; and a likely value interdependence among different claims. All of these considerations warrant MCL designation.”

Common complaints include allegations that the body treats polypropylene mesh as a foreign object. Inflammation and fluid retention around the mesh builds as the body tries to expel the mesh, causing intense pain. When inflammation causes the mesh to migrate inside the body, surrounding tissue can become damaged by adhesions that grow into the mesh.

Some of the hernia mesh lawsuits allege the mesh can cause bowel obstructions. Other hernia mesh lawsuits allege the layered mesh products encourage bacteria growth, causing infection to fester deep inside the body where it can be difficult to treat.

In addition, the polypropylene mesh allegedly can degrade over time, releasing tiny flakes of plastic that irritate nearby tissue, which also can suffer infection.

Hernia mesh lawsuits allege Ethicon should have known its mesh products could be prone to shrinkage, expansion, deformation, migration and could induce a foreign body reaction, inflammation, chronic pain and organ or nerve damage.