Covidien Settles Transvaginal Mesh Lawsuits Filed by 11,000 Women

According to recently filed court documents, Medtronic’s Covidien unit has reached an agreement that may settle more than 11,000 transvaginal mesh lawsuits filed by women who experienced complications with products made by the company.

Covidien manufactured transvaginal mesh and bladder sling products sold by different companies for use during surgical repair of pelvic organ prolapse and female stress urinary incontinence, which have been linked to reports of severe and debilitating problems due to erosion of the mesh through the vagina, infection and other complications.

In a pretrial order (PDF) filed this week in the federal multidistrict litigation (MDL) for all lawsuits over Bard Avaulta mesh, U.S. District Judge Joseph Goodwin indicated that Covidien has entered into a Confidential Master Settlement Agreement to resolve claims related to it’s pelvic repair products. Judge Goodwin appointed a special master to peform certain defined functions related to the administration and implementation of the settlement.

While the order does not disclose terms of the agreement to settle vaginal mesh lawsuits, a recent filing (PDF) with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) by Medtronic, which acquired Covidien in January, the settlement was reached on June 1 and may resolve 11,300 lawsuits.

Judge Goodwin currently presides over more than 80,000 transvaginal mesh and bladder sling lawsuits centralized as part of seven different federal MDLs established for cases brough against different manufacturers, including C.R. Bard, Ethicon, Boston Scientific, American Medical Systems (AMS), Coloplast, Cook Medical and Neomedic.

While Covidien is not one of the named defendants in any of the MDLs, Bard has previously indicated in a regulatory filing that Covidien supplied it with mesh products and Covidien is indemnifying Bard in some cases.

Following several early bellwether trials held in courts throughout the U.S., many of which resulted in multi-million dollar damage awards for women who experienced problems after receiving transvaginal mesh, Judge Goodwin has been aggressively pushing the parties to enter good faith settlement negotiations to avoid the need for tens of thousands of individual trials throughout the country.

Given the lack of settlement progress by other Johnson & Johnson’s Ethicon subsidiary, Judge Goodwin scheduled a consolidated trial for later this year, which will involve claims brought by 26 different women going before the same jury in November 2015.

The only major manufacturer to resolve nearly all of the claims involving their products, with Endo International announcing in October 2014 that it has agreed to pay about $1.6 billion to resolve “substantially all” of the 20,000 mesh lawsuits pending against it’s AMS subsidiary.