Claims Severed in Minn. Federal Ethicon Pelvic Mesh Action

MINNEAPOLIS — A Minnesota federal judge has ordered two couples to each file their own complaint in a case targeting Ethicon’s Gynecare pelvic mesh devices, ruling that their claims cannot be joined because they do not “arise out of the same transaction, occurrence, or series of transactions or occurrences.”

In an Oct. 29 order, Chief Judge John R. Tunheim of the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota explained that the claims “involve different surgical procedures, performed by different surgeons, five years apart, in different hospitals, on different patients.”

Sarah Bergman and Patricia Budnik each underwent implantation of …