Jury Awards Plaintiff $3.6 Million in Bard Device Case

An Arizona federal jury has awarded a plaintiff $3.6 million in a bellwether case involving C.R. Bard’s inferior vena cava (IVC) filter. District Court judge David Campbell limited plaintiff Sherr-Una Booker’s claims to defective design, failure to warn, and punitive damages.

Booker had the device implanted in 2007 and shortly after the procedure it fractured, tilted and migrated, according to court documents. The jury agreed that the fractured device perforated her inferior vena cava, the blood vessel that transports blood from the lower body to the heart. “Ms. Booker still has a piece of her filter in her IVC wall and she lives in fear that this piece will break free and travel to someplace in her body like the last piece did resulting in open heart surgery,” the plaintiff’s lawyer said.

Currently, there are thousands of cases against the device pending in multidistrict litigation.