For Paul Trevino and his family the suffering caused by the defective hernia mesh has been vindicated by a Rhode Island jury’s verdict of $4.8 million. That’s what CR Bard, a subsidiary of Becton, Dickinson and Company will have to pay Mr. Trevino for its defective hernia mesh.
This won’t be the last trial faced by the medical device company. Bard is facing more than 30,000 similar lawsuits over its mesh hernia repair devices.
Trevino alleged in his 2018 lawsuit that the so-called Ventralex hernia repair mesh, made of the plastic polypropylene, burrowed into his tissue, causing pain and inflammation and ultimately requiring corrective surgery.
The Ventralex Hernia Patch Mesh was cleared by the FDA on July 16th, 2002. Bard claims that the Ventralex Mesh is “substantially equivalent” to the Bard Composix Kugel Mesh Patch, which contains the same memory recoil ring. Bard settled 2,600 Kugel Mesh defective product cases for $184 million in 2013.
Ventralex Mesh contains two layers of polypropylene mesh and a memory recoil ring component which is left implanted alongside the polypropylene mesh.
About 17,000 hernia mesh cases are consolidated in a multidistrict litigation in Columbus, Ohio federal court, and most of the rest are consolidated in the state court in Rhode Island, according to BD’s most recent financial report.
