Johnson & Johnson Faces Another Widower’s Morcellator Lawsuit, Lawyers Tracey & Fox Report

June 26, 2015 – – Since the US Food & Drug Administration warned surgeons that power morcellators can spread undiagnosed uterine cancers, Johnson & Johnson’s Ethicon division has been hit by a wave of lawsuits. Among the plaintiffs are many widowed husbands. Filing claims for compensation, these widowers say that their late wives suffered from significantly worsened sarcomas after undergoing hysterectomy procedures for the removal of supposedly benign fibroids. Following battles long and short, plaintiffs claim their wives succumbed to late-stage cancers exacerbated by power morcellators, medical devices that grind fibroid and uterine tissue into small pieces.

On February 5, 2015, plaintiff Arthur T. Johnson became the most recent widower to echo these allegations, in a suit filed in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. According to attorneys at Tracey & Fox, a law firm investigating potential morcellator claims, Johnson’s complaint paints a portrait of corporate negligence and personal tragedy. A copy of the court documents, filed under 2:15-cv-00553-JHS, can be found here.

In court documents, Johnson writes that his wife, Jonel Davis-Johnson, underwent a hysterectomy to remove uterine fibroids on June 19, 2012. He claims that Ethicon’s Morcellex Sigma Tissue Morcellator MX0200 was used to fragment his wife’s uterus during the operation. Following the procedure, a pathological examination of Davis-Johnson’s morcellated tissue found cancer cells. Johnson’s wife was diagnosed with leiomyosarcoma, an aggressive soft tissue cancer, and one that plaintiff says was completely undetected, despite a thorough cancer screening before the hysterectomy. But according to the FDA, “there is no reliable method for predicting or testing whether a woman with fibroids may have a uterine sarcoma.” As a result, the agency has deemed morcellation’s risks too high for it to be considered a safe option in “the majority of women undergoing myomectomy or hysterectomy for treatment of fibroids.” According to Johnson’s complaint, those risks became a reality for his late wife.

A subsequent operation revealed that Davis-Johnson’s leiomyosarcoma had spread from her uterus, where it began, to her right fallopian tube. After the malignancies were excised, she “continued to undergo regular monitoring and observation,” her surviving husband writes. Davis-Johnson was deemed cancer-free, but only for seven months. On January 9, 2013, a “diagnostic laparoscopy […] revealed malignant cells consistent with a recurrence of leiomyosarcoma,” plaintiff claims. Johnson says that his wife passed away less than a month later, on February 6.

Johnson claims that his wife’s death was “a result of the use of” Johnson & Johnson’s power morcellator. He says that his spouse was never warned of the morcellator’s risk, that it could “disseminate and upstage occult cancer.” Johnson & Johnson ignored years of medical research, plaintiff writes, including studies he says demonstrated that power morcellators are unsafe by design. But in the face of this mounting evidence, plaintiff accuses the company of failing to adopt safety measures that could have minimized the device’s risks.

Johnson & Johnson, once the world’s largest morcellator manufacturer, pulled its devices from the market entirely in the wake of the FDA’s warnings. But whether or not the company’s response came soon enough is still a matter of debate. According to the Wall Street Journal, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation has begun to scrutinize whether or not Johnson & Johnson knew of the device’s risks long before recalling its own power morcellators. Interviewing public health advocates and surgeons, federal investigators have already brought one pertinent development to light: a retired pathologist from Lewisburg, Pennsylvania says that he warned Johnson & Johnson of the morcellator’s risks as early as 2006. In a correspondence with the medical director of Ethicon’s Women’s Health and Urology department, Dr. Robert Lamparter cautioned in no uncertain terms that if morcellation is performed on a woman with an undetected uterine cancer, “the patient’s survival is jeopardized.” Ethicon transferred his warnings to a complaint department, Lamparter told the Times, but his complaint was soon “dismissed.”

In response to these developments, the dangerous medical device attorneys at Tracey & Fox have begun investigating the claims of patients and survivors who believe that a power morcellator procedure caused the spread and worsening of an undetected uterine cancer. The firm’s experienced lawyers, who can be reached at 713-495-2333, have been providing free consultations to women who underwent uterine or fibroid morcellation.

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Contact Tracey & Fox:

Sean Tracey
888-427-0543
440 Louisiana Street , Suite 1901
Houston, TX 77002

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