Lawsuit Information Center
The Bair Hugger is a medical device that is used to keep patients warm and regulate body temperature during surgery. New research has shown, however, that the Bair Hugger increases the risk of infections by pushing bacteria into the body during surgery. This has prompted thousands of Bair Hugger infection lawsuits which have been consolidated into a class action MDL.
Our firm is now accepting Bair Hugger infection lawsuits from individuals who underwent a joint replacement surgery during which a Bair Hugger warming device was used and developed a post-surgical infection.
Updates
March 13, 2023 Update: a new Bair Hugger infection lawsuit (Jones v. 3M Co., et al., 23-cv-603) was filed in the MDL in the District of Minnesota today. The plaintiff, Cheryl Jones, is an Alabama resident who underwent knee replacement surgery in April 2021 during which the Bair Hugger device was used. She subsequently developed a deep joint infection which required her to undergo multiple additional surgeries on her knee.
February 12, 2023 Update: the first status conference in the newly reopened Bair Hugger class action MDL was held this week before Judge Joan Ericksen.
December 16, 2022 Update: the Bair Hugger class action MDL has formally been reopened. On December 14, 2022, 3M sent a letter to MDL Judge Joan Ericksen asking that the MDL proceedings be reopened and resumed. In the letter, 3M claimed that nothing has really changed and urged Judge Ericksen to fast-track a new round of bellwether trials for the start of 2024. Today, the plaintiffs responded with their own letter saying that new evidence has emerged (specifically a new study published in JAMA in 2022) that strengthens their position on causation.
November 26, 2022 Update: 3M will get some insurance coverage for Bair Hugger claims. A federal court in Minnesota ruled this week that 3M must only pay a single deductible for more than 5,000 Bar Hugger lawsuits. But the insurance company – Federal Insurance Co. is not on the hook for all of 3M’s attorneys’ fees and other defense costs in the warming device lawsuits because only a fraction of the claims fall within the insurance policy period.
May 18, 2022 Update: The Supreme Court rejected 3M’s appeal.
August 23, 2021 Update: Last week a federal appeals court reinstated 5,000 claims that had been dismissed and this litigation is back on. But few lawyers are taking new claims.
Should you bring a Bair Hugger lawsuit if you believe you suffered an infection from a Bair Hugger during surgery? Decide for yourself. But despite some early punches to the face for plaintiffs, there is still a reasonable chance these cases end well for plaintiffs. Let’s talk about these cases, what there are, where they are going, and what are the prospects that the 3M Bair Hugger cases reach a settlement.
Bair Hugger
Bair Hugger MDL Coming Soon?
A Bair Hugger device is a temperature management system that is used during surgery. The purpose of the invention is to help the body regulate the appropriate temperature.
The Bair Hugger pushed hot air through a hose into a blanket specially made to work with the device. The hot air produced by Bair Hugger accumulates under the surgical drape covering the patient. This hot air escapes under the surgical drape below the level of the surgical table or over top of it.
Bair Hugger Forced Air Warming Device is designed, manufactured, and marketed by Defendants 3M Company and Arizant Healthcare, Inc. There are more than 50,000 Bair Hugger FAWs in the United States.
How does it work? The Bair Hugger is a portable heater/blower connected by a flexible hose to a blanket, typically positioned for the patient getting surgery.
Keeping a patient warm is particularly useful during knee and hip replacement surgery because the procedures tend to be very long. The body loses heat increasingly throughout the surgery.
Another thing about metal hip and knee replacement surgery is that your body is particularly prone to infection. Why? The metal helps spread the infection.
Bair Hugger Lawsuit
So if you are not already familiar with this litigation, you know where this is going. The device is blowing bacteria on the patient. These germs are expelled from the interior of the Bair Hugger FAW blower by the outward airflow, traveling through the hose into the disposable blanket and escaping all over the operating table and the patient. If bacteria in a surgical site is not bad enough, the metal helps grease the wheels of further infection.
At the core of these claims is that the design of these blowers was flawed. Given the risks of blowing bacteria in the surgical area, plaintiffs’ lawsuits allege that the Bair Hugger should have been designed to prevent internal contamination and the emission of airborne contamination. One big problem for 3M will be a study that found that 96% of the Bair Hugger systems were dispersing inordinately excessive levels of contaminants.
This will also be a “what did you know and when did you know it?” lawsuit. The plaintiffs’ lawsuits will also contend that setting aside the design failure and the failure to test, the manufacturer knew or should have known of the risk of infection the Bair Hugger was causing and did nothing about it. So the core of it is that the manufacturer knew about the potential for infections but failed to warn patients and their healthcare providers. These lawsuits also claim that the manufacturer failed to take steps to improve the design of the device to prevent infections from occurring.
Plaintiffs’ experts have concluded the Bair Hugger can cause deep joint infections in exposed patients. They believe Bair Hugger creates convective currents that carry bacteria-laden particles from near the floor to the surgical site. The plaintiffs’ experts’ opinions rely on a comprehensive search of the relevant literature, their own independent experiments, a review of the combination of numerous sources of evidence, and internal 3M documents to conclude that the Bair Hugger transmits particles and bacteria to the surgical site.
Bair Hugger Class Action
The Bair Hugger infection lawsuits were consolidated into a class action MDL in 2015. The MDL was assigned to Judge Joan Ericksen in the District of Minnesota. The Bair Hugger class action MDL eventually grew to over 5,000 individual plaintiffs from around the country. The first bellwether test trial in the MDL resulted in a defense verdict for 3M. A second bellwether trial was scheduled, but before that trial happened, Judge Ericksen granted a motion for Summary Judgement filed by 3M on the grounds that the plaintiffs’ scientific evidence on the issue of causation was not legally sufficient.
Judge Ericksen’s ruling on the Summary Judgement motion resulted in the dismissal of all 5,000 pending cases in the Bair Hugger MDL. The plaintiffs appealed the ruling, however, and eventually, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit overturned Judge Ericksen’s ruling. Although the 8th Circuit agreed that there were weaknesses in the causation evidence, it held that the evidence was strong enough to be admissible in court and, therefore, summary judgment was not appropriate.
3M appealed to the Supreme Court, but that appeal was denied. This effectively ended the appellate battle and reopened the Bair Hugger class action MDL. Bair Hugger infection lawsuits are now being filed in the MDL again and Judge Ericksen will schedule another round of bellwether trials which could yield drastically different results.
File a Bair Hugger Lawsuit
Our product liability attorneys are currently accepting new Bair Hugger surgical infection cases. If you underwent a joint replacement surgery in which a Bair Hugger device may have been used and you subsequently developed a deep joint infection, contact us today for a free consultation. Calls us at 800-553-8082 or contact us online.