Bard PowerPort MDL Judge Allows More Time To Select Next Round of Bellwether Cases

The U.S. District Judge presiding over coordinated pretrial proceedings in all federal Bard PowerPort lawsuits has given lawyers involved in the litigation an additional 35 days to complete fact discovery and select a group of six cases that will be eligible for the first bellwether trials in the MDL (multidistrict litigation).

Becton, Dickinson & Company and its C.R. Bard subsidiary currently faces more than 800 product liability lawsuits over problems with its PowerPort port catheter products, each raising similar allegations that the device is prone to degrade and fracture inside the body, resulting in severe and life-threatening port catheter fractures or port catheter infections.

Given common questions of fact and law raised in complaints filed throughout the federal court system, a Bard PowerPort MDL was established before U.S. District Judge David G. Campbell in the District of Arizona in August 2023, where the parties have been preparing a group of representative claims for early trial dates to help gauge how juries may respond to certain evidence and testimony that will be repeated throughout the litigation.

After initially selecting 24 potential bellwether cases in December 2023, Bard PowerPort lawyers narrowed that list to 15 claims last month, which are now going through the next phase of discovery. The Court previously indicated that all discovery must be completed in those claims by January 31, 2025, with a final group of six potential trial picks selected by early March 2025. However, Judge Campbell recently agreed to extend deadlines, giving the parties until mid-April 2025 to finalize their final selections.

In an amended case management order (PDF) issued on January 2, Judge Campbell directed the parties to exchange their lists of the six proposed bellwether trials by April 7, 2025, together with their proposals regarding the order in which the cases should go before juries.

If the parties are unable to agree on the selections, they have each been directed to file a proposal with the court by April 14, 2025, together with a memorandum explaining their selections and why they oppose the cases proposed by the other side. Judge Campbell will then decide the final “Bellwether Group 1” claims, which will go through final trial preparations.

“Bellwether Group 1 will be governed by a scheduling order and case management order that will be determined at the time the group is selected,” Judge Campbell wrote. “The parties will meet and confer in an effort to agree upon such scheduling order with the goal of completing remaining case-specific discovery as close as possible to the completion of common-issue discovery.”

While the outcomes of these early bellwether trials will not have any binding impact on other claims pending in the MDL or state courts, they are expected to have a major impact on future Bard PowerPort lawsuit settlement negotiations, which will be necessary to avoid hundreds of individual claims being set for trial in the coming years.