An Ohio woman suing Johnson & Johnson over its surgical pelvic mesh has won a damages hearing a little more than a month after a jury found the product did not cause her claimed damages.
Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas Judge Michael Erdos last week granted plaintiff Kimberly Adkins' post-trial motion requesting a damages hearing in her lawsuit against J&J subsidiary Ethicon. On June 9, a Philadelphia jury had handed up a defense verdict in the case. It was the fifth pelvic mesh case to be tried out of Philadelphia's pelvic mesh mass tort program, and the only case to have ended in a defense win.
Erdos' one-page order filed July 19 granted Adkins' post-trial motion contending that the jury's findings were inconsistent on the issue of whether the alleged design defect caused the injuries, and said the case should proceed to a damages hearing.
Adkins' motion, which was filed June 19, argued that the jury's determination that the product had been defectively designed but not the cause of the plaintiff's injuries was against the weight of the evidence.
"Even if the jury disbelieved plaintiff's testimony, found the testimony inconsistent or concluded plaintiff was exaggerating her injuries, the jury was not free to reject the undisputed consensus of both sides' experts and the treating physician that plaintiff suffered some injury from the implantation of mesh," the motion said.
Adkins' attorney, Bryan Aylstock of Aylstock, Witkin, Kreis & Overholtz, said in an emailed statement that his client was pleased with the ruling.
"Ms. Adkins is pleased and grateful that the court agreed that a new trial on damages was appropriate in this case and grateful to the jury that they found Ethicon's product defectively designed and defective in its warning to unsuspecting physicians and patients," Aylstock said.
Kenneth Murphy of Drinker Biddle & Reath handled the case for J&J.
In an emailed statement, a spokeswoman for Ethicon said, "We are considering our next legal options in this case in light of this decision."
The defense win in Adkins' case came about two months after another Philadelphia jury awarded a woman $20 million, including $17.5 million in punitive damages. In May, a jury awarded another plaintiff $2.1 million over similar claims.
The first case to hit trial out of Philadelphia's pelvic mesh mass tort ended with a $12.5 million award in December 2015. Soon after, the second pelvic mesh case came to a $13.5 million award, with the jury awarding $10 million in punitive damages.