A woman filed a class action lawsuit against Johnson & Johnson for allegedly misrepresenting the dangers associated with the Gynecare Prolift Mesh.
Lydia Taft filed the class action lawsuit on May 7 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois against Johnson & Johnson Inc. and Ethicon Inc.
According to the complaint, Taft had the Gynecare Prolift Mesh implanted at Memorial Medical Center in Springfield on Oct. 29, 2009. Following the procedure, she claims she “began experiencing painful and serious complications, including but not limited to, infections; injury to the bowel and bladder; abnormal bleeding; constant, excruciating pan; and mesh erosion.”
Taft allegedly underwent a second operation for a “flexible sigmoidoscopy and argon plasma coagulation treatment of eroded transvaginal mesh.”
As a result, Taft claims she endured mental and physical pain and suffering, sustained permanent injuries, incurred medical expenses and suffered financial or economic loss.
The suit states that surgical mesh products have been used to repair abdominal hernias since the 1950s. Then beginning in the 1970s, the products were used to repair prolapsed organs. By the 1990s, the products were used to treat pelvic organ prolapse and stress urinary incontinence.
The defendants began making pelvic mesh kits for physicians to use, which contain polypropylene mesh. Taft alleges polypropylene mesh material is “biologically incompatible with human tissue and promotes an immune response in a large subset of the population receiving the mesh products.”
“This immune response promotes degradation of the polypropylene mesh, as well as the pelvic tissue, and can contribute to the formation of severe adverse reactions to the mesh,” the suit states.
Taft alleges the products were marketed to the medical community and the patients as safe, effective and reliable and are implanted by safe, effective and minimally invasive surgical techniques.
Taft claims the defendants “have consistently underreported and withheld information about the propensity of the mesh products to fail and cause injury and complications, and have misrepresented the efficacy and safety of the mesh products, through various means and media, actively intentionally misleading the FDA, the medical community, patients, and the public at large.”
In 2011, the FDA issued a Safety Communication reporting that serious complications associated with the mesh “are not rare,” and a Joint Committee Opinion also identified that the mesh may contract, retract or shrink inside the body. As a result, the complications allegedly cause inflammation of the pelvic tissue, among other injuries.
The plaintiff’s injuries were allegedly included in the reports.
Taft alleges the defendants knew or should have known about the Gynecare Prolift Mesh’s risks and complications.
“Defendants had sole access to material facts concerning the defective nature of the mesh products and their propensity to cause serious and dangerous side effects and hence, cause dangerous injuries and damage to persons who used the mesh products,” the suit states.
She also alleges the defendants omitted the risks of the mesh products and advertised them as a safe medical device.
The plaintiff seeks a judgment in the proposed class’ favor in excess of $75,000, plus costs, attorney fees, interest, and all other relief deemed appropriate.
She is represented by Rebecca Fredona and Ken Moll of Moll Law Group in Chicago.
U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois case number 3:20-cv-430