Federal appeals court reinstates nearly 6,000 products liability lawsuits against 3M News
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Federal appeals court reinstates nearly 6,000 products liability lawsuits against 3M

The US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit reinstated Monday almost 6,000 products liability lawsuits filed against 3M in relation to a surgical device that was meant to keep patients warm but instead allegedly caused them to develop infections.

3M’s Bair Hugger device is a convective patient-warming device that is used during surgery to decrease bleeding, speed up recovery time, and decrease the risk of infection. The plaintiffs in the case, who all formerly underwent surgery, claimed that they contracted infections because of the device. 

In 2019, a district judge excluded the plaintiffs’ general causation medical experts and an engineering expert. The judge then granted summary judgment to 3M as to all of the claims.

On Monday, the appeals court stated that the trial court judge wrongly excluded the testimony from the medical experts that supported the plaintiffs’ claims. All of the medical experts relied on a 2011 observational epidemiological study and the district judge found that the experts failed to bridge a gap left by the study. However, the appeals court determined that the experts additionally relied on other studies and reports, and their failure to handle the study’s limitations was not “fatal to the admissibility of their opinions.”

Similarly, the court found that the trial court abused its discretion through its general exclusion of other expert testimony. Thus, the court reversed in full the exclusion of the general causation experts and in part the exclusion of the engineering expert.

This effectively reinstates almost 6,000 lawsuits against 3M for the Bair Hugger device. However, 3M has indicated that the company is “confident in [its] case and will continue to vigorously defend [itself].”