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Mesh News Desk, August 3, 201 ~ This story is from Law360.
By Steven Trader
Law360, New York (July 21, 2016, 1:39 PM ET) -- Johnson & Johnson unit Ethicon on Wednesday urged the West Virginia federal judge overseeing multidistrict litigation regarding its pelvic mesh products to nix an expert who was prepared to testify on the products’ allegedly poor quality and degradation, saying he is unqualified and unreliable.
Ethicon is seeking to exclude the testimony of the Dr. Russell Dunn, a professor in the department of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Vanderbilt University (here) , who the company claims is prepared to testify on behalf of the patients that the Prolene mesh used in a number of Ethicon’s pelvic mesh products undergoes hazardous oxidative degradation in the body, and that Ethicon’s quality system for these devices failed to comply with industry standards.
The problem, Ethicon argued, is that Dr. Dunn has zero experience with medical devices and admits that he is not an expert in biomaterials. What’s more, Dr. Dunn has never been involved in the design, quality control or any aspect of risk management of any medical device, has no experience with the medical industry standards that his opinions focus on and in fact “has a serious misunderstanding of those standards,” Ethicon wrote.
Read the rest of the story on Law 360 here.
**Editors note- For some reason many news outlets misreport the actual number of pelvic mesh product liability lawsuits facing Ethicon/ Johnson and Johnson. This story says there are 23,000 lawsuits against Ethicon in the MDL in Charleston, WV. A quick search of the So District of WV shows readers there are actually 33,874 as of today.
Go to the Ethicon MDL here and here.
Here is the Court's website. All of the manufacturers are listed there. Additionally pelvic mesh cases are filed in state courts. New Jersey has an active state MDL. See it here.
There are in excess of 100,000 pelvic mesh product liability lawsuits filed in the US alone and more filed globally. #
