Years after a settlement was approved by courts, patients who suffered complications from medical mesh used to treat issues like hernias are feeling frustrated, disappointed, and let down by the amount of money they received.
In one of the medical mesh cases patients are dealing with, it started with a hernia—where an intestine or organ pushes through the muscle wall.
KIRO 7 spoke to more than a dozen people, some in Washington, others across the United States. Many of them feared retaliation from their lawyers and wanted privacy for the pain they’ve experienced. Four patients agreed to go on the record with the mental, physical, and emotional pain they’ve dealt with, in some cases for decades.
Patient A lives in Washington. While working one day in 2015, he felt pain in his abdomen.
“I was at a job site,” he said. “It started hurting really bad.”
When Patient B was at the doctor to have her issue evaluated, her doctor mentioned that mesh has had problems.
“He said, ‘Have you heard that there’s issues with mesh?’ And I said, ‘A little bit.’ He said, ‘It’s perfectly safe.’”
Patient C felt like mesh was the only option she was given after her hernia appeared.
“I didn’t get any options. [The doctor] wanted to do surgery the next day,” she said. “I wasn’t told about side effects; I wasn’t told about lifelong injuries; I wasn’t told anything.”
Patient D could feel the mesh for nearly a decade after its implantation. She began to develop what doctors told her was similar to an autoimmune response, and the mesh began to fail.
“I felt it when it failed,” she said, “I would say it’s some of the worst pain I’ve ever been in in my life.”
She became very sick. A doctor told her that she was developing an infection.
“A couple of days later, I was almost hospitalized because the infection was about to kill me,” she said.
She had the mesh removed, but she is still dealing with autoimmune-like issues and abdominal pain she doesn’t think will ever go away.
Patient B stood up at work one day and felt a pop. She had vaginal mesh installed, a separate lawsuit from that of hernias. When she noticed bleeding in her groin, she knew something was wrong. She pushed for the implant to be removed
“It was horrendous; the implant surgeons didn’t believe me.” You feel so discounted, you feel like you’re crazy, but you know something is wrong."
Patient A dealt with swelling, bruising, and a pain that he had never felt before while the mesh was still implanted. He also couldn’t get doctors to believe him, eventually wearing one down until the mesh was finally removed.
“It was frustrating as hell because you’re supposed to be able to trust those people,” he said.
The trust patients had hoped for from medical staff was just the start of promises they felt were broken to them. Patients with both hernia and vaginal mesh sued the manufacturers in what is called a multidistrict mass tort litigation (MTL), a massive filing with patients filing across the country combined into one case. In the case of the BARD hernia mesh, 38,000 people are part of a case in which the manufacturer has been ordered to pay $1.3 billion for damages caused by the mesh.
Each of the patients we spoke to tried to join in with different law firms.
The payment to each patient is based on a point system; the more aspects of the case that have been proven to be due to defective mesh that a patient has experienced, the higher the payout.
However, lawyers’ fees can take a big chunk of the money.
Patient B’s attorney took a 40% fee, which legal experts tell KIRO 7 is on the high end of the industry standard. However, it took nearly a decade from the suit’s beginning to its end to get her settlement.
“It was two separate lawsuits. One of them took six and a half years, the other was eight and a half years. I think they wait for us to die off,’ she said. “They don’t care about you; they’re out to make their 40% off of you and get the settlements going.”
Patient D was offered terms of a 40% fee, a 7% filing fee, and a 30% repayment fee that would go to whoever paid for the surgery—in her case, Medicaid. She turned down the settlement in part because of the small amount she would receive and because signing on would prevent her from ever filing suit against the manufacturer if any further issues arose.
“I told them they could take their paperwork and shove it where the sun don’t shine and I’d be happy to facilitate it if necessary,” she said. “To people like me, don’t settle for pennies. You’re better off with nothing than these people giving you a penny because a lot of people could lose any benefits they have.”
She says she felt taken advantage of. She also disagrees with the repayment fee—a common piece in these litigations.
“I don’t think anybody but [the manufacturer] should have to pay. Because if they had been truthful about their product to begin with, maybe all of these people wouldn’t have had mesh installed to begin with,” she said.
KIRO 7 is using approximate amounts to protect the patients in other settlements. Patient C’s $25,000 settlement was reduced to around $7,000 after paying attorney fees to more than one law firm, getting charged a filing fee, a multidistrict litigation fee, and a repayment fee.
“I feel like I deserve more compensation for my pain and suffering,” she said.
Patient A’s $55,000 was reduced to less than $10,000 through a similar process.
“It felt like a slap in the face, you know, almost like a here, here’s a couple of bucks,” he said. “The law firms aren’t compassionate. They’re no noble knight in shining armor. They’re taking advantage of a vulnerable population.”
“That can be very hard, I think, for a lot of victims to understand,” said Samir Parikh, a professor of law at Wake Forest University.
Parikh has testified to the U.S. Senate about issues with mass-tort settlements, including that if a manufacturer goes bankrupt, claimants rarely receive any money.
“I understand there’s a sense of maybe that’s inequitable, but you have to understand the incentives, and if you alter the system, you may not have attorneys willing to bear the upfront costs.”
Parikh says one of the biggest problems with MTLs is that it’s a flawed approach, but it’s the best the U.S. has right now for large medical cases where each claimant’s experience can be somewhat different, even if caused by the same problem.
Class action suits (CASs) are similar to mass tort litigation (MTL), though MTLs limit a patient’s payment to just the procedure itself, whereas CASs will consider “punitive damages” such as “loss of enjoyment of life,” where the impact of the pain and suffering is calculated into the payment to claimants.
“You’re not going to be considering punitive damages. That is not part of the equation.” Parihk said. “It’s something that could ultimately suppress a recovery in a way that is somewhat unexpected.”
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