$57.1M Ethicon TVT Secur Mesh Verdict Awarded

Philadelphia, PAA $57.1 million verdict has been awarded against the makers of defective TVT Secur mesh, Johnson & Johnson and its subsidiary, Ethicon. The award breaks down as $50 million in punitive damages and $7.1 million in compensatory damages for plaintiff Ella Ebaugh, a Pennsylvania resident, according to court documents.

The award may well be the largest to date against Ethicon in a vaginal mesh personal injury complaint. There are over 100 more transvaginal mesh cases pending in Philadelphia's pelvic mesh mass tort program.

In Ebaugh’s complaint, she alleged she was diagnosed with urinary incontinence in 2005 and had TVT-Secur mesh installed in 2007. However, the device didn’t provide any relief so she had a second device implanted about two months later. During the next few years, that device eroded through her urethra on three occasions, and she had to undergo three revision surgeries between 2011 and 2016.

Ebaugh alleged that Ethicon and J&J failed to inform patients and physicians about the risks associated with the TVT products. She further claimed that the defendants withheld information about the complications from the medical community.

Transvaginal mesh, also known as pelvic mesh or TVM bladder sling, have been implanted in tens of thousands of women to treat pelvic organ prolapse (POP) and stress urinary incontinence (SUI). Many of those women have suffered severe transvaginal mesh complications, resulting in more than 100,000 defective device lawsuits filed and possibly making the vaginal mesh one of the largest medical device mass torts ever.