Last week, we posted about a $10 million award of punitive damages in a product liability action against a manufacturer of hip implants.  We explained our view that the award was excessive, in part because hundreds of similar cases are pending across the country.

We’ve also been following a much larger set of cases against medical device manufacturers—those involving injuries allegedly resulting from the use of surgical mesh to treat pelvic organ prolapse and stress urinary incontinence. An astonishing 85,000 cases against surgical mesh manufacturers have been centralized for pre-trial proceedings in federal district court in West Virginia, and thousands of additional cases have been filed in state courts.  As may be inevitable with so many turns of the Roulette wheel, a few plaintiffs have hit the jackpot.

The biggest verdict so far came last May, when a Delaware jury returned a $100 million award against Boston Scientific—comprising $25 million in compensatory damages and $75 million in punitive damages. In an October 9 order, the trial court in Barbra v. Boston Scientific Corp. reduced the verdict by a factor of ten—leaving Boston Scientific facing a judgment of $2.5 million in compensatory damages and $7.5 million in punitive damages.   That’s obviously a substantial improvement, but in our view the reduced award remains quite excessive.