Bard PowerPort Bellwether Trial Selections To Be Made in Late April 2025

Lawyers will select six Bard PowerPort lawsuits to prepare for bellwether trials, to gauge how juries will respond to evidence and testimony likely to be repeated throughout the litigation.

The U.S. District Judge presiding over all federal Bard PowerPort lawsuits has tasked the parties with choosing six cases by the end of April 2025, which are representative of the legislation as a whole, and will be prepared for a series of early “bellwether” test trials.

Becton Dickinson & Company and its C.R. Bard subsidiary face more than 1,000 product liability lawsuits over port catheter infections, device fractures, migration and other complications linked to its line of PowerPort implants, which are totally implantable vascular access devices (TIVADs) used to deliver chemotherapy and other medications directly into a patient’s bloodstream. They include an injection port site, where the needle is inserted, and a polyurethane catheter tube that delivers the fluids into the body.

While the chemo ports have been sold as a safe and effective product for years, each of the lawsuits raise similar allegations that the catheter material is prone to degrade and fracture inside the body, which may result in the need for revision surgery to remove the failed device.

Given common questions of fact and law raised in complaints brought throughout the federal court system, all Bard PowerPort lawsuits are currently consolidated as part of an MDL, or multidistrict litigation, with U.S. District Judge David G. Campbell presiding over coordinated discovery and pretrial proceedings for claims brought nationwide out of the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona.

To help the parties evaluate the relative strengths and weaknesses of their claims and how juries may respond to certain evidence and testimony that will be repeated throughout the lawsuits, Judge Campbell has indicated that a series of early bellwether test trials will be held in the Bard PowerPort MDL.

In December 2023, the parties selected a group of 24 Bard PowerPort bellwether cases. Late last year, the parties narrowed that list down to 15 Bard PowerPort lawsuits that are eligible for trial.

While the court previously called for the parties to again narrow that list down to six cases by early March 2025, a Case Management Order (PDF) issued by Judge Campbell last week extended that deadline by about 30 days. 

Lawyers are now expected to meet and select the final bellwether plaintiffs by April 21. If needed, they have until April 28 to submit a memorandum presenting those selections to the court.

Once those selections have been made, Judge Campbell’s order lays out a schedule of events to prepare those cases for trial and submission of expert reports throughout the rest of 2025.

Although the outcomes of these early bellwether trials will not have any binding impact on other claims pending in the MDL or state courts, they will be closely watched by lawyers involved in the litigation and the average jury awards are expected to have a major impact on future Bard PowerPort lawsuit settlement negotiations, which will be necessary to avoid hundreds of individual claims being set for trial in the coming years.