A California woman and her husband are joining a multidistrict litigation seeking compensation for injuries attributed to a Bard blood clot filter.

In her Bard lawsuit, plaintiff Rosario M. says she was implanted with a Bard Meridian IVC filter in June 2014.

She is now raising claims against manufacturers C.R. Bard Inc. and Bard Peripheral Vascular Inc. for injuries caused by that filter.

Specifically, Rosario is bringing claims for products liability, negligence, breach of warranty , fraud, and violation of California consumer protection statutes.

Her husband Martin is also making a claim for loss of consortium, a type of claim that a spouse can make to seek compensation for harm to their marital relationship caused by the alleged injuries.

Litigation over the Bard Blood Clot Filter

This Bard lawsuit is one of many in a multidistrict litigation, or MDL, now going on in a federal court in Arizona. An MDL is a procedural mechanism sometimes used in the federal court system to combine similar cases filed against the same defendant at roughly the same time, in the interest of conducting pretrial procedures more efficiently.

Defendant C.R. Bard manufactures several different blood clot filters, or IVC filters.

These filters are intended to help prevent blood clot-related injuries like pulmonary embolism in patients who are at risk for such conditions but for whom anticoagulant medication is not a good option.

The Bard blood clot filter is designed to be implanted inside the inferior vena cava, the large blood vessel that returns blood from the lower body to the heart and lungs.

If all goes as intended, the filter traps any blood clots in that vessel, preventing them from traveling to the lungs where they could have caused a pulmonary embolism.

Unfortunately for some patients, these filters don’t always work as they were intended to.

Reports of IVC filter complications say these filters may fracture, allowing fragments to travel through the bloodstream to the heart where they can do potentially life-threatening damage. Other reports say filters have punctured the vessel wall or migrated out of place.

In a few cases, complications have made removal of the filter or its fragments impractical or impossible.

Plaintiffs in the Bard blood clot filter MDL generally allege they were not adequately warned about the risk of harm associated with these devices. Had they been given a better idea of the risks, they say they would never have chosen to have these filters implanted.

The plaintiffs cite a study published in the Annals of Surgery that they say shows IVC filters are more likely to cause trouble than to prevent it.

As per the study, patients implanted with IVC filters had higher incidences of deep venous thrombosis, thromboembolus, pulmonary embolus, and death.

According to the plaintiffs, failure of these devices can be attributed to design and manufacturing flaws that render them unable to safely do the job they were intended to do.

Rosario’s Bard Blood Clot Filter Lawsuit is Case No. 2:16-cv-03895 filed within In re: Bard IVC Filters Products Liability Litigation, MDL No. 2641, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona.