A Washington construction worker felt abdominal pain at a job site in 2015. Years later, after persuading a doctor to remove a failing hernia mesh implant, he received a $55,000 settlement — but after fees, he walked away with less than $10,000. He is one of more than a dozen medical mesh patients in Washington and across the country who told a Seattle television station that their payouts fell far short of covering years of complications.
According to KIRO 7 News Seattle, the patient — identified only as Patient A in the station's reporting — experienced swelling, bruising, and severe pain while the mesh remained implanted in his body. Another patient, identified as Patient C, said she was offered mesh surgery as her only option for a hernia repair and was never told about potential side effects, lifelong injuries, or other risks. Her $25,000 settlement was reduced to around $7,000 after attorney, filing, multidistrict litigation, and repayment fees were deducted.
Years of Complications, Shrinking Payouts
The cases are part of sprawling multidistrict mass tort litigation against mesh manufacturers, including a case against Bard hernia mesh that covers roughly 38,000 people. Bard's parent company, medical device maker Becton, Dickinson and Company, agreed in October 2024 to pay more than $1.3 billion over several years to resolve the vast majority of pending hernia mesh claims, according to a statement from the company. C.R. Bard and its subsidiary Davol Inc. manufactured more than 60% of all hernia mesh devices implanted in the United States before Bard was acquired by Becton Dickinson in 2017 for $24 billion, according to Miller & Zois.
Patient B, who had vaginal mesh installed, experienced groin bleeding after the implant and pushed for its removal, per the station's reporting. That patient's lawsuits took six and a half years and eight and a half years to conclude, and the attorney handling the case took a 40% fee. Patient B's doctor said the mesh had problems but was perfectly safe, KIRO 7 reported — an assessment that stands in contrast to the complications the patient described experiencing.
A Point System That Values Documentation Over Pain
The station's reporting found that settlement payments are based on a point system tied to proven complications from defective mesh, rather than the full scope of a patient's suffering. A separate analysis of the same Becton Dickinson settlement found that gross payouts under that points-based methodology range from $2,500 for claimants with incomplete medical documentation to more than $100,000 for those with comprehensive evidence of severe, proven complications, according to LlamaLab. Mass tort litigation limits a patient's payment to the procedure itself and does not include punitive damages, unlike class action suits, which can consider factors such as loss of enjoyment of life, the station's report noted.
One patient, identified as Patient D, turned down a proposed settlement because of its small payout and restrictions on future claims. Her doctors said she was developing an autoimmune-like response, and she continues to experience autoimmune-like issues and abdominal pain after having the mesh removed, following nearly a decade with it implanted. She also developed an infection that nearly required hospitalization. The proposed settlement terms she rejected included a 40% attorney fee, a 7% filing fee, and a 30% repayment fee — and would have prevented her from filing further suit against the manufacturer.
Why the Deductions Pile Up
Those layered deductions are not unique to one case. Federal court orders in multidistrict litigations routinely mandate a common benefit fee assessment — often ranging from 3% to 10% deducted directly from a plaintiff's gross recovery — to compensate court-appointed leadership attorneys who handle centralized discovery and trial preparation for all plaintiffs, according to an order from the Southern District of Indiana. On top of that, the federal Medicare Secondary Payer Act requires Medicare to seek reimbursement for conditional medical payments made on behalf of injured beneficiaries, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, triggering mandatory lien deductions from a patient's net settlement check.
Samir Parikh, a professor of law at Wake Forest University who has testified to the U.S. Senate about problems with mass-tort settlements, told the station that mass tort litigation is flawed but currently the best approach the U.S. legal system has for resolving large medical cases. Parikh also said claimants rarely receive money at all if a manufacturer goes bankrupt, per the station's account.
A Wider Pattern in Medical Device Litigation
The scale of hernia mesh implantation helps explain why so many patients are caught in this system. Between 1 million and 1.5 million hernia repair surgeries are performed annually in the United States, with synthetic or biologic mesh used in more than 80% to 90% of procedures, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Most of those meshes entered the market through the FDA's 510(k) premarket notification process, which allows devices to be sold without clinical trials if they demonstrate substantial equivalence to previously cleared products. A comprehensive FDA analysis of 22 years of adverse event reports identified more than 55,000 reports tied to hernia mesh implants, citing chronic pain, infection, mesh migration, tissue adhesion, bowel perforation, and revision surgery among the top complications.
Hernia mesh litigation follows a similar trajectory to earlier transvaginal mesh cases. Prior multidistrict litigations involving Johnson & Johnson, Boston Scientific, and C.R. Bard resolved more than 100,000 claims and generated roughly $8 billion in cumulative settlements and jury verdicts before those federal dockets closed by 2021, according to Drugwatch. In Washington specifically, the state Attorney General's Office has recovered nearly $20 million in consumer protection restitution for women injured by surgical mesh, including an $8.8 million multistate settlement with Boston Scientific in 2021 and a $9.9 million resolution with Johnson & Johnson in 2019, per the Washington State Office of the Attorney General.
The mesh cases also echo other recent scrutiny of medical practices in Washington. Hoodline previously reported on a Richland OB-GYN facing nine new lawsuits over unconsented surgical procedures, including mesh implantations performed without explaining the associated risks — a pattern of inadequate disclosure that surfaces again in the hernia mesh patients' accounts.
