Ben Martin Law Group represented plaintiff in 2021 trial

MADISON, Wis., Aug. 17, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has ruled that a $3.3 million jury verdict against medical device company Bard will stand, denying the company’s bid for a new trial in an IVC filter product defect case.

Dallas-based trial attorneys Ben C. Martin and Tom Arbon with The Ben Martin Law Group were lead counsel in the trial along with Joseph Johnson of West Palm Beach, Florida. The lawyers represented the plaintiff, Natalie Johnson, who sued Bard after a fragment of the IVC filter device that had been implanted in her vena cava broke away and became embedded in her heart.

The jury verdict was handed down in June 2021. Bard’s appellate briefing requesting a new trial stemmed from an alleged discrepancy between an expert witness’s pretrial testimony and later trial testimony. The judges denied the request.

Martin commented after the appellate opinion was handed down, “Ms. Johnson’s verdict was one of four plaintiff verdicts obtained by the firm in separate trials across the country in a span of about three months, each of those juries finding that Bard’s IVC filters were defective and dangerous to patients. We’re pleased that this panel of judges affirmed both the jury’s verdict in Ms. Johnson’s case and the federal district court’s final judgment on that verdict.”

The plaintiff in this case received the IVC filter implant ahead of a surgical procedure on her legs. The inferior vena cava devices are meant to prevent blood clots from reaching the heart and lungs. A CT scan in 2018 revealed several pieces of the device had fractured, and while most of the shards were surgically removed, one piece remains lodged in Ms. Johnson’s right ventricle. Her surgeons determined it was too dangerous to her health to remove it. 

Mr. Martin told jurors in various IVC filter defect cases that Bard’s failure to warn about the products’ design flaws made the company’s IVC filters a “ticking time bomb.” Bard was also accused of aggressively marketing the filters and failing to issue proper warnings despite knowing the risks. At one point, Bard faced more than 8,000 similar lawsuits that were consolidated in multidistrict litigation.

The case is Natalie Johnson v. C.R. Bard Inc. et al., case number 22-2610, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. Counsel for Johnson at the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals were Ben C. Martin of Ben Martin Law Group and Charles Siegel of Waters Kraus & Paul who authored the brief to the court.

The attorneys of the Ben Martin Law Group have helped thousands of victims of medical device failures and defective pharmaceutical devices and represent victims of negligence arising from accidents and injuries caused by catastrophic vehicular and trucking accidents, oil field explosions, medical and hospital malpractice, and other personal injuries caused by corporate malfeasance. If you suspect you have a defective medical device and need legal representation, contact us by filling out this contact form or calling us at (214) 761-6614.

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SOURCE Ben Martin Law Group