This post does not come from the Reed Smith side of the blog.
Favorable New Jersey appellate court decisions in product liability cases are almost always worthy of mention here. So we bring you Goodson v. C.R. Bard, 2018 WL 1370652 (N.J. App. Div. Mar. 19, 2018). To be truthful, we’re bringing it back to you. Bexis discussed the trial court’s decision to grant summary judgment to defendants last year.
As we discussed then, this is a case involving mesh used in hernia procedures. The particular mesh product involved in this case is not involved in the pelvic mesh MDL proceedings. And that may be reflected in the strength of the plaintiff’s expert reports, which is to say that they are not strong at all. While the plaintiff used experts who have been involved in the pelvic mesh MDL, not one of them seemed to give the right opinions.
In particular, even though plaintiff brought a design defect claim, none of his experts gave an opinion that the design of this particular product was actually defective or that such a defect caused the plaintiff’s injuries. Id. at *4-5. Rather, his experts simply described various alleged risks of the product. This is not even close to sufficient to support a design defect claim. Id. Nor did any of the experts opine that there was a safer, feasible alternative design. Id. Similarly, even though plaintiff also brought a negligent failure to wan claim, none of the experts gave an opinion on the standard of care for issuing a warning or whether defendants met that standard. Id. at *5-6. In other words, plaintiff didn’t have a warnings expert to opine on whether the warning was adequate.
In short, plaintiff’s experts struck out looking.
To make matters worse, the treating doctor testified that he was aware of the potential risks of this mesh product and informed plaintiff of them. Id. at *6. There goes proximate causation under the learned intermediary doctrine.
Accordingly the New Jersey appellate division upheld the trial court’s grant of summary judgment to defendants. Unfortunately, it designated its opinion “not for publication.” That’s too bad. But rest assured: it happened. Westlaw already has it on-line. And the trial court’s decision, which Bexis’s post from last year lays out in considerable detail, has an excellent analysis of all the weaknesses in plaintiff’s case, an analysis that was essentially adopted by the Appellate Division. And, of course, we’ve written on it twice now. With all of that, we’re confident that you’ll find some way to make use of this appellate decision in your cases.