At the end of April, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld the ruling by a lower court that a woman’s vaginal mesh lawsuit should be tossed out because it exceeded the statute of limitations.

The appellate court concluded that plaintiff Brenda R.’s claims, along with her husband’s claims, came too long after the implantation of the product.

The judges said Brenda, a Utah resident, should have begun questioning the mesh’s quality before the end of 2007. Utah has a statute of limitations of two years for any product liability claims to be filed.

Brenda’s case was initially part of the MDL against Boston Scientific Corp., manufacturer of Brenda’s vaginal mesh. Last year, Boston Scientific won summary judgment and Brenda’s case was cut at that time.

The federal court in West Virginia that was initially overseeing Brenda’s case ruled that the two-year statute began from the time her doctor told her in April 2007 that her problems she had reported were caused by her vaginal mesh.

The appellate court had a different statute of limitations date in mind, however.

The court said that Brenda’s doctor attributed the vaginal mesh being a problem more as a result of Brenda engaging in sexual intercourse, rather than a result of a product defect.

Based on that conversation, the court said Brenda could have interpreted it as the pain being her fault, not a result of the mesh itself.

However, Brenda’s doctor also told her that she could reduce her pain and other symptoms by having surgery, which for Brenda, it did not, according to court documents.

“When the revision surgery failed to correct her symptoms, Robinson had ‘sufficient information’ to put her ‘on notice to make further inquiry’ about the cause-in-fact of her harm,” the Fourth Circuit panel said. “By that point, Robinson was on inquiry notice that the mesh could be the cause-in-fact of her harm and was required to perform due diligence to determine if it was the actual cause.”

Brenda claimed that she continued to seek treatment for her pain and in 2012, she saw a television advertisement outlining the complications associated with vaginal mesh. Brenda claimed that was the first time that she considered that the vaginal mesh itself could have been defective.

After seeking a second opinion about her mesh and related problems, Brenda ended up having a surgery to have all of the mesh extracted, according to court documents. At that time, Brenda stated that the pursued litigation against Boston Scientific alleging negligence and other claims, the court said.

The vaginal mesh MDL is still currently ongoing. U.S. District Judge Joseph R. Goodwin who said that several plaintiffs have chosen to end their lawsuits against one vaginal mesh manufacturer, C.R. Bard.

Judge Goodwin said that all the claims in those lawsuits had been settled with Bard and other companies.

There are still more than 10,000 vaginal mesh lawsuits pending against Bard alone. Other manufacturers such as Ethicon and Boston Scientific, among others, still have a lot of litigation to face.

Overall, 70,000 lawsuits are in seven separate MDLs in West Virginia. As a result of all of the reports of complications, the U.S. FDA has reclassified vaginal mesh devices so that they must now undergo the most strict safety evaluation standards before they are released to the market.

The Vaginal Mesh Lawsuit is Case No 15-1441, in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.