US jury says Medtronic owes $88 million in first case to go to trial over Covidien's hernia mesh

By Nate Raymond and Dietrich Knauth

BOSTON, Aug 4 (Reuters) - Medtronic must pay an Alabama man and his wife $88 million, a federal jury decided on Tuesday, in the first case to go to trial out of thousands facing the company from people claiming they were injured by hernia-repair mesh implants made by one of its units.

Following a three-week trial in Boston, jurors found that Medtronic's Covidien unit failed to provide an adequate warning about the dangers posed by the mesh implanted in Larry Patterson in 2017, Medtronic and the man's lawyer said. The failure of Patterson's hernia mesh implant required significant reconstructive surgery, according to his complaint. The jury awarded no punitive damages, and it did not find that Covidien engaged in fraud.

The verdict was by far the largest in more than a dozen hernia mesh and transvaginal mesh cases that have gone to trial, Patterson's attorney Timothy O'Brien said.

"This is a very substantial verdict, but it reflects very substantial damages," O'Brien said.

Medtronic said it will challenge the verdict in post-trial motions and on appeal.

"We remain confident in Covidien’s hernia mesh products, as over the past two decades these products have been used safely and effectively in millions of patients, and hernia mesh has long been the standard of care for repair of all but the smallest hernia defects,” Medtronic said in a statement.

TEST CASE

Patterson's case is the first bellwether, or test case, to go to trial of thousands of cases against Medtronic, the last major body of litigation over hernia mesh after other companies, including units of Becton Dickinson and Johnson & Johnson, largely settled cases against them.

About 10,350 plaintiffs nationally are pursuing cases against Medtronic alleging they were harmed after being implanted with products from hernia lines that include Parietex, ProGrip and Symbotex.

Most of the cases against Medtronic are in Massachusetts, where about 7,450 plaintiffs have pending lawsuits in state court. Another 2,400 lawsuits are consolidated in a federal case before a single judge in Boston, including Patterson's.

He was implanted with a Symbotex mesh during a 2017 hernia repair operation and claims it eventually caused him to suffer a bowel obstruction necessitating another operation in 2020.

His lawyers argued that doctors, including Patterson's surgeon, were never warned about a potential risk posed by a key safety feature of Covidien's product — a collagen coating intended to act as a barrier and prevent bare polyester mesh from being exposed to intestines while abdominal lining regrows. 

Symbotex's coating was made from pig collagen, a shift from the past use of bovine collagen. Patterson's lawyers argued that the company knew the porcine collagen would not last as long as bovine collagen but failed to warn doctors, including Patterson's surgeon, of the risks.

Lawyers for Medtronic countered that the coating on Patterson's implant worked as designed and that the mesh did not cause Patterson's bowel obstruction.

They pointed to other factors, saying he had suffered a hernia recurrence, which he was at increased risk of developing as a result of surgical decisions and factors such as obesity and diabetes.

(Reporting by Dietrich Knauth in New York and Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Mark Porter and Rod Nickel)