It’s a brief week, so we’re going to do a brief put up a few quick resolution on a product that lasted a very long time.
An inferior vena cava (“IVC”) filter was implanted in plaintiff in 2004. Some years later she skilled a complication, not recognized within the resolution, which led her to file a merchandise legal responsibility swimsuit in opposition to the producer in June 2022 – over 18 years later. In re Prepare dinner Medical, Inc., 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 205990, at *1 (S.D. Ind. Sep. 27, 2023). Plaintiff is a resident of Texas and had her 2004 surgical procedure in Texas, so the courtroom utilized Texas legislation which has a 15-year statue of repose.
A statute of repose units a definitive date past which an motion can’t be filed. It doesn’t matter that plaintiff’s reason behind motion has not but accrued. A statute of repose is triggered by an occasion just like the sale of the product and establishes a brilliant line cutoff that extinguishes legal responsibility. For that cause, statutes of repose are thought of protection pleasant. However they usually require a major time period to move. The usual is round 10-15 years from sale or producer. (Be aware Montana’s is barely 3 years).
And whereas they’re often exhausting and quick guidelines, some statutes of repose, like Texas’s, have exceptions. Texas legislation gives that the 15-year statute of repose doesn’t apply if the product is accompanied by an categorical guarantee “that the product has a helpful protected lifetime of longer than 15 years.” Id. at *2. On this case, plaintiff tried to depend on language within the IVC filter’s Affected person Information that mentioned the product was protected efficient as a short lived or everlasting gadget. Id. at *3. Nevertheless, the Affected person Information additionally lists doable hostile results corresponding to migration of the gadget or perforation of the vena cava. Learn collectively, the Affected person Information did “not assure the [filter] would conform to a specific commonplace at some stage in [plaintiff’s] life.” Id. at *4. Any “guarantee” that the product might stay completely implanted was certified by the identification of doable hostile occasions. Because the producer didn’t warrant the IVC filter had a “helpful protected life” of greater than 15 years, this exception didn’t apply. Whereas this may increasingly appear case-specific, it’s exhausting to think about any producer of an implantable medical gadget warranting the life span of its product given all the variables of the human physique, an individual’s therapeutic capability, an individual’s compliance with medical recommendation, and so forth.
Plaintiff subsequent argued she certified for the “latent illness” exception. This exception gives that if a plaintiff is uncovered to a product earlier than the top of 15 years, that publicity triggered plaintiff’s illness, however the signs of the illness didn’t manifest in a fairly noticeable manner till after 15 years had handed, the statute of repose doesn’t apply. Discover the phrase “illness.” Plaintiff tried to argue that “illness” needs to be broadly interpreted to incorporate “medical gadget failures.” Id. at *5. Not solely did plaintiff don’t have any case legislation to help her interpretation, however the statute additionally establishing the exception doesn’t point out medical gadgets or the varieties of accidents that come up from them. The plain language of the statue applies to “ailments ensuing from publicity to a product.” Id. Suppose asbestos, lead, Agent Orange. Not a medical gadget that works as meant for greater than 15 years.
Defendants’ movement for judgment on the pleadings was granted in its entirety.
