A motion to move the mass litigation over Johnson & Johnson pelvic mesh has been denied by a federal court.

Johnson & Johnson had filed a motion to dismiss more than 200 pelvic mesh lawsuits on the grounds that it was inconvenient to try them in a Philadelphia court.

The denial was brief and the judge did not offer explanation, though the judge had also rejected a similar motion by Boston Scientific, a company also involved in the case.

The motion was formally dismissed on November 6^th, 2015 with a short court order. The first individual pelvic mesh lawsuit of this MDL was scheduled to begin on December 7^th, 2015.

So many pelvic mesh lawsuits have been filed that the court system has resorted to multidistrict litigations or MDLs to sort through them. MDLs are a process where similar cases are grouped together.

Since pelvic mesh lawsuits typically make similar allegations, hinge on similar evidence, and accuse the same defendants, they have been grouped into at least half a dozen MDLs against various manufacturers of pelvic mesh, including this one against Johnson & Johnson.

Orders like this one can help organize MDLs, by deciding which cases can remain under their purview.

The plaintiffs—allegedly injured by pelvic mesh—argued that any other jurisdiction would be just as inconvenient as the Philadelphia court, and that transferring the cases elsewhere would just delay the process.

Previously, the defendants had filed motions to exclude cases on the grounds that many had not claimed their alleged pelvic mesh complications had any specific ties to the state of Pennsylvania. When this motion was filed back in March 2015, it was also denied.

Pelvic Mesh Complications

Pelvic mesh, also called bladder slings, transvaginal mesh, vaginal mesh, bladder slings, and other terms, is a form of surgical mesh. Since the 1970s, surgeons have used more generalized surgical mesh to support various tissues and organs when their normal support structures fail.

When medical companies realized that surgeons were cutting surgical mesh into specific shapes for pelvic surgeries, a number of different companies began producing pelvic mesh, surgical mesh pre-cut for surgeries on pelvic organs.

Since pelvic mesh was based on existing technology, it was able to exploit the FDA’s 510(k) rule. The 510(k) rule allows medical technology that is “substantially equivalent” to existing medical implants to skip most of the normally-required FDA testing.

Pelvic mesh lawsuits alleged that pelvic mesh can cause serious pelvic mesh complications, and that the makers of this medical implant failed to adequately test pelvic mesh by exploiting the 510(k) rule.

Pelvic mesh lawsuits have been filed across different companies and models of pelvic mesh, though the pelvic mesh MDLs are organized by the company that made the mesh.

This pelvic mesh MDL was filed against Ethicon, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson involved with making medical implants. This pelvic mesh MDL also names several related companies as defendants.

The Pelvic Mesh MDL is In Re: Pelvic Mesh Litigaiton, MDL No. 0829, in the First Judicial District of Pennsylvania Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, Civil Trial Division.