Dr Shezad Malik Law Firm has offices based in Fort Worth and Dallas and represents people who have suffered catastrophic and serious personal injuries including wrongful death, caused by the negligence or recklessness of others. We specialize in Personal Injury trial litigation and focus our energy and efforts on those we represent.
IVC Filter Injury. Under the guidance of the federal court overseeing the thousands of Cook IVC filter lawsuits, Cook Medical and plaintiffs lawyers are engaged settlement negotiations.
IVC Filter Injury. Cook IVC Filters Celect, and Gunther Tulip linked to catastrophic injuries including wrongful death.
5,000 Cook IVC Filter Injury Claims
The number of Inferior Vena Cava (IVC) filter injury and death lawsuits continue to climb and now are past the 3,000 mark over design defects leading to fractures, migration, tilting and perforation.
Recent medical studies have linked IVC filters to serious and catastrophic injuries.
What are IVC Filters?
Ava Langford from Missouri, has filed a lawsuit claiming that she developed serious and severe personal injuries when a Bard G2 inferior vena cava (IVC) filter fractured and broke apart.
Langford filed her complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, alleging that a Bard G2 IVC filter failed and fractured. Langford received the medical device to prevent pulmonary embolism.
Every year, thousands of patients are implanted with a retrieval inferior vena cava filters but they are not warned by doctors about the risk of injury from these temporary devices.
And as time passes, patients tend to forget that they had this device implanted and the first inkling that they had the device, is when they suffer serious injury from a complication.
Experts say that there is a very high failure rate with these devices, which only increases with the duration of the filter in the body, and eventually all of the devices will fail. So 100% failure of the device becomes not a question of “if” but “when.”
According to Langford, the G2 filter is defectively designed, but Bard claims that the IVC filter device had “enhanced fracture resistance” and “increased migration resistance.” Langford claims that Bard failed to perform adequate clinical testing to ensure the filter device was safe and effective.
The filter devices are used when there is a blood clot in the leg known as a deep vein thrombosis and there is a contraindication to using blood thinners, which is the standard therapy for leg blood clots.
These devices are supposed to trap blood clots from traveling from the leg to the lungs and causing a pulmonary embolism, which can be fatal.
These devices unfortunately, have been linked to hundreds of adverse event reports where they puncture the vena cava, tilt out of position or migrate or break apart and cause metallic fragments to travel to the heart or lungs, a condition known as embolization.
2 Major Manufacturers of IVC Filters
There are 2 major manufacturers of IVC filters, Cook Medical and C.R. Bard. The complaints in the Bard and Cook IVC Filter litigation have similar allegations, the injured patients claim that the manufacturers designed and sold retrievable defective devices that were unreasonably dangerous.
FDA Warnings
The FDA in August 2010, announced a warning about the risk of IVC filter injuries, noting that they had received hundreds of adverse event reports where filter devices broke apart and travelled to other areas of the body or caused perforation and migration.
Bard IVC Filter Claims Consolidated in Arizona
All filed Bard Inferior Vena Cava filter injury, perforation and migration lawsuits, are consolidated and centralized in Phoenix, Arizona for coordinated pretrial proceedings.
Existing cases pending throughout the federal court system have been transferred to U.S. District Judge David G. Campbell, who will oversee the multidistrict litigation (MDL) proceedings. Bard Peripheral Vascular is the manufacturer of these Bard IVC filters and is headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona.
This consolidation and centralization of Bard IVC filter cases only applies to cases filed in the federal court system. According to latest court data there are 100 filed Bard Recovery filter and Bard G2 filter lawsuits currently pending in Arizona federal court. As the litigation matures it is expected that the final tally will consist of several thousand injury and defective product liability cases.
Benefits of MDL Consolidation and Centralization
The MDL streamlines the trial process, by preventing duplicative discovery and all the plaintiffs and defendants are gathered before one judge.
Cook IVC Filter Claims Consolidated in Indiana
MDL has been established for all Cook Medical IVC filter lawsuits, involving injuries with the Cook Celect and Gunther Tulip filters. There are more than 200 complaints over those products centralized before U.S. District Judge Richard L. Young in the Southern District of Indiana.
Lawsuits filed against Cook Medical over their defective IVC filters are gaining traction and moving towards trial. U.S. District Judge Young recently announced that a group of 10 Cook Medical IVC filter lawsuits have been chosen for early trial dates that will begin late 2016.
MDL Bellwether IVC Filter Trials
It is common in complex multidistrict ligation involving pharmaceutical and medical device cases, to have mini trials, known as bellwether trials.
A small group of cases will be prepared for early trial dates. The outcome of these trials are designed to aid settlement negotiations, especially if the jury sides with the injured plaintiffs and awards a large damage award or in cases involving gross negligence, awarding punitive damages, which are designed to punish the company for its reckless behavior.
The truth is that thousands of people have been severely injured by the side effects of these medical devices. And shockingly the injuries were avoidable simply enough by the timely and diligent removal of these temporary devices.
Every year, thousands of patients are implanted with a retrieval inferior vena cava filters (IVC) but they are not warned by doctors about the risk of injury from these temporary devices.
And as time passes, patients tend to forget that they had this device implanted and the first inkling that they had the device, is when they suffer serious injury from a complication.
According to some experts, there is a very high failure rate with these devices, which only increases with the duration of the filter in the body, eventually all of the devices will fail. So 100% failure of the device becomes not a question of “if” but “when.”
What is an IVC Filter?
The filter devices are used when there is a blood clot in the leg known as a deep vein thrombosis and there is a contraindication to using blood thinners, which is the standard therapy for leg blood clots.
These devices are supposed to trap blood clots from traveling from the leg to the lungs and causing a pulmonary embolism, which can be fatal.
Lawsuits filed against Cook Medical over their defective IVC filters are gaining traction and moving towards trial. U.S. District Judge Young is overseeing the federal multidistrict litigation (MDL) and has announced that a group of 10 Cook Medical inferior vena cava (IVC) filter lawsuits have been chosen for early trial dates that will begin late 2016.
Federal Cook MDL In Indiana
All Cook Celect and Cook Gunther Tulip IVC filter lawsuits have been consolidated in a MDL, in the Southern District of Indiana for fast track discovery and pretrial proceedings, since October 2014. According to the latest court house data, there are about 200 lawsuits filed against Cook Medical, that have been consolidated and centralized in Indiana.
What’s The Problem With Cook IVC Filters?
Inferior vena cava (IVC) filters, are small, implantable metal devices for patients at risk of a pulmonary embolism or a blood clot to the lung. These folks have contraindications to the standard therapy for blood clots, anticoagulants. The filters block blood clots from traveling to the heart or lungs, from the legs, known as a deep vein thrombosis.
Larry and Brenda Johnson recently filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, claiming that the filter used to prevent blood clots traveling from the legs to the lungs damaged his heart.
Johnson was implanted with the retrievable IVC filter to prevent blood clots from traveling to his lungs and causing a pulmonary embolism.
This order by the JPML establishes a nationwide federal Multidistrict Litigation (MDL) in one courthouse. This MDL will include all product liability and personal injury lawsuits involving side effect complications with Cook IVC filters.
What are Cook IVC Filters?
The U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation, earlier this week, considered the application for all Cook Celect and Gunther Tulip IVC filter lawsuits filed nationwide in U.S. District Courts. The application was brought by the plaintiffs and they requested that the litigation be centralized before one judge for coordinated pretrial proceedings, as part of an MDL, or Multidistrict Litigation.
Cook Medical 27 IVC Filter Lawsuits
Currently, Cook Medical faced at least 27 different IVC filter lawsuits pending in 11 different districts. Plaintiffs have requested that the litigation be transferred to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana as part of the MDL.
What is the Cook Celect?
Cook Medical manufactures the Celect Vena Cava Filter. It was approved in 2008 under the FDA 510(k) approval process. This process is a short cut to getting approval for medical devices.
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