Paragard IUD Lawsuit Bellwether Trials Scheduled To Begin December 2025 and February 2026

Trials over the Paragard IUD fracture risks were previously expected to begin earlier this year, but have been delayed and rescheduled several times.

The U.S. District Judge presiding over all federal Paragard IUD lawsuits has announced that the first bellwether trials will go before juries in late 2025 and early 2026, involving claims that the birth control implants are prone to break during removal.

The Paragard IUD is a small plastic device wrapped in copper, which is placed in the uterus to provide women long-acting protection against pregnancy for up to ten years.

Although the device is marketed as a safe and reversible form of contraception, allowing doctors to remove the IUD during an out-patient office procedure when patients no longer want the birth control, a number of women have been left with painful and debilitating injuries when a Paragard IUD fractured during attempts to remove it, often resulting in the need for emergency surgery to retrieve pieces of the broken IUD.

As a result of the manufacturers failure to adequately disclose these risks, more than 2,800 product liability lawsuits are currently being pursued throughout the federal court system, each raising similar allegations that the Paragard IUD was defectively designed and unreasonably dangerous.

Given common questions of fact and law raised in complaints filed in U.S. District Courts nationwide, consolidated pretrial proceedings were established in December 2020, transferring all pending and new cases to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, for coordinated discovery and pretrial proceedings before Judge Leigh Martin May as part of an MDL (multidistrict litigation).

Paragard Bellwether Trial Dates

As part of the pretrial proceedings, Judge May has established a bellwether program, where a small group of representative cases are being prepared for early trial dates to help the parties gauge how juries are likely to react to certain evidence and expert witness testimony that will be repeated throughout thousands of cases if Paragard settlements are not reached.

Judge May previously indicated that the first Paragard bellwether trial would begin early this year, and a group of 10 potential bellwether trials were selected by the parties to go through case-specific discovery and depositions in preparation for trial. The trial date was later rescheduled and was supposed to begin last month before being delayed again.

However, during an October 29 status conference, Judge May announced that the first bellwether trial has been rescheduled to begin on December 1, 2025. A second bellwether trial is planned to start on February 2, 2026, but that date may change depending on the availability of defense counsel, according to status conference minutes (PDF).

Although the outcome of these Paragard bellwether trials will not have any binding impact on other claimants, the cases are expected to have a large impact on any negotiations for a potential global Paragard IUD settlement that would avoid the need for hundreds of individual cases to be remanded back to U.S. District Courts nationwide for individual trial dates.