Following the filing of dozens of Essure lawsuits, a California judge has taken steps to coordinate them, in an effort to streamline legal proceedings and to benefit all parties involved.

Judge Winifred Smith issued a case management order in late December of last year outlining coordination efforts for the litigation, determining which lawyers are responsible for certain legal procedures and highlighting broader litigation strategies in an effort to streamline pretrial proceedings related to the Essure lawsuits.

The dozens of Essure lawsuits had multiple plaintiffs, representing hundreds of women who claim that the Essure permanent birth control device caused them personal injuries.

A total of five lawyers were appointed as part of the Plaintiffs’ Executive Committee to work toward coordination of pretrial proceedings. Coordinating the litigation in this way will allow the claims to proceed more quickly toward resolution and will avoid issuance of separate judgments by different judges that may conflict with one another.

According to California protocol set forth by the judicial branch, if two or more civil claims filed in different counties “share common questions of fact or law,” these claims can be brought together under one court and overseen by a single judge.

The judge’s ruling would then apply to all of the cases that were consolidated.

Essure Lawsuits Spreading Nationwide

Across the country in federal and state courts, hundreds more Essure lawsuits have been filed against Bayer, the device’s manufacturer. Many of these actions also have multiple plaintiffs, with the total number of women fighting against Bayer in the thousands.

Essure is a permanent birth control device used as an alternative to surgical sterilization.

The device itself consists of two metal coils that are inserted through the vagina into the woman’s fallopian tubes. The body initiates an inflammatory response which causes scar tissue to develop around the coils.

Over a period of months, this tissue completely blocks the fallopian tubes. In this way, a woman’s eggs cannot be fertilized by the sperm due to a physical barrier.

Women have chosen this form of permanent sterilization because it can easily be completed in a physician’s office in an outpatient visit with much less recovery time than the surgical alternative. Bayer says Essure has a very high success rate.

But the Food and Drug Administration says it received nearly 10,000 reports of complications related to the Essure device from the date of its initial approval in 2004 through the end of 2015.

The most commonly reported complications include severe pain, heavy periods, headache, painful intercourse, extreme fatigue, autoimmune reactions, metal allergies to the device components and more.

Four adult deaths have been reported. Some babies who were conceived with the Essure device in place have reportedly died in the womb or were stillborn.

The FDA has recently reviewed additional data on adverse event reports and has required Bayer to conduct additional trials on the device. Some say this is a step in the right direction, while others believe the product should be completely removed from the market due to the high number of complications reported.

In the meantime, the FDA required that Bayer place a black box warning on the product label, the most severe warning that any medical device may carry.