Mazie Slater and the Pelvic Mesh Litigation
Adam M. Slater of Mazie Slater led the pelvic mesh litigation against Johnson & Johnson and its wholly owned subsidiary Ethicon, Inc., filing the first case in the country against the pelvic mesh manufacturers, and trying the first case against them. In addition, we litigated pelvic mesh cases against other pelvic mesh manufacturers including C.R. Bard, Boston Scientific, American Medical Systems, Coloplast, Mentor, and Caldera
Beginning in 2007, Mazie Slater represented hundreds of women throughout the United States who were injured by pelvic mesh, also known as vaginal mesh. We devoted tens of thousands of hours to mastering the applicable science, the design of the devices, the lack of adequate warnings, the anatomic physiology, the causation of the devastating injuries suffered by so many of our clients and conducting the litigation. This included numerous trials in New Jersey and around the country.
Adam Slater, a nationally respected trial lawyer handling defective medical device and defective drug cases, was appointed liaison counsel by the New Jersey Superior Court, where thousands of cases were filed and consolidated against Johnson & Johnson/Ethicon and C.R. Bard. In that role, he led and coordinated the litigation at the outset, and he continues in the role of liaison counsel today.
Adam Slater’s prominence in the medical device litigation resulted in him being featured in the Netflix documentary The Bleeding Edge, which pulled back the curtain on the medical device industry, including through the lens of the pelvic mesh litigation.
Mr. Slater led the Mazie Slater trial team in multiple trials of pelvic mesh cases and won four of the largest jury verdicts against Johnson & Johnson/Ethicon and C.R. Bard. This includes the $68 million jury verdict on behalf of Mary and Tom McGinnis against C.R. Bard in April, 2018, the $15 million jury verdict on behalf of Elizabeth and Tadeusz Hrymoc in December, 2017, and the $11.1 million jury verdict on behalf of Linda Gross in February of 2013. Mr. Slater was also co-lead trial counsel for the $12.5 million jury verdict on behalf of Patricia Hammons in December, 2015. In addition, Mr. Slater tried pelvic mesh cases against Johnson & Johnson/Ethicon in Missouri state court and the federal court in West Virginia that oversaw the federal pelvic mesh MDL, with both of those cases settling during trial. The settlements obtained for Mazie Slater’s clients are confidential and the amounts cannot be disclosed.
Mazie Slater won many important Court decisions during the pelvic mesh litigation. One noteworthy victory was an unprecedented decision from the Massachusetts Superior Court, the court overseeing pelvic mesh litigation in Massachusetts. Mr. Slater served subpoenas on the editors of the New England Journal of Medicine, who filed motions to quash the subpoenas. Mr. Slater obtained an Order forcing the editors to submit to sworn depositions about an important article published in the New England Journal of Medicine regarding Johnson & Johnson’s Prolift pelvic mesh device. Read Here. Those depositions resulted in important testimony that established a lack of scientific rigor underlying the study and the data in the article, rendering the article useless to Johnson & Johnson/Ethicon in attempting to defend the Prolift device at trial.
Mr. Slater also established an international presence in the pelvic mesh litigation. On February 24, 2015, he testified before the Scottish Parliament in support of a petition to ban pelvic mesh devices in Scotland. Mr. Slater testified regarding the defects and failure to warn doctors and patients of the risks, the horrible complications caused by the devices, deceptive marketing, manipulation of medical societies and medical journals, and the destruction by Johnson & Johnson of tens of thousands of relevant documents, among other topics during his testimony. Read Here. Mr. Slater was consulted by attorneys in Scotland, England, France, and Australia regarding pelvic mesh cases brought in those countries.
As part of the development of the litigation, Mr. Slater conducted more depositions of corporate witnesses employed by the mesh manufacturers than any other attorney involved in the litigation. Those depositions were videotaped and portions of this testimony were utilized in every trial brought against Johnson & Johnson/Ethicon to our knowledge.
The deposition testimony lays out in detail how the focus on profit became more important than the focus on safety, in the words of the people who were responsible.
Watch Testimony of Ethicon Witnesses That Resulted In These Verdicts
Clifford Volpe
Ethicon Associate Director, Research & Development
Price St. Hilaire
Ethicon Product Director, Marketing Director Worldwide
David Robinson, MD
Ethicon Medical Affairs Director
Paul Parisi
Ethicon Director of Professional Education
Sean O’Bryan
Ethicon Senior Project Manager, Regulatory Affairs
James P. Mittenthal
Ethicon Corporate Representative, Document Destruction
Bryan Lisa
Ethicon Associate Director, Regulatory Affairs
Piet Hinoul, MD
Ethicon Medical Affairs Director
James Hart, MD
Ethicon Chief Medical Officer
Axel Arnaud, MD
Ethicon Medical Affairs Director
Vincent Lucente, MD
Urogynecologist, Ethicon Consultant