Largest women’s health class action decision upheld
By Jerome Doraisamy|05 March 2021
A landmark decision from November 2019 has been upheld, delivering findings in favour of thousands of women whose “lives were destroyed”.
Landmark judgment
In November 2019, Justice Anna Katzmann of the Federal Court of Australia found in favour of women impacted by pelvic mesh implants sold by Johnson & Johnson and Ethicon which were “not fit for purpose”. The class action – “the largest women’s health class action in Australia’s history”, according to Shine – commenced in October 2012 and culminated in a trial that ran over seven months starting in July 2017.
Pelvic Mesh Implant Appeal Begins in Sydney
A Sydney court will begin hearing a multinational pharmaceutical giant’s challenge to a landmark ruling that pelvic mesh implants caused debilitating injuries to hundreds of Australian women.
The November 2019 ruling found three companies in the Johnson & Johnson group had acted negligently and concealed the true extent of complications from the pelvic implants.
More than 1350 Australian women had joined the class action, launched in 2012.
But Johnson & Johnson on Feb. 1 is expected to tell the Full Court of the Federal Court the trial judge made more than a dozen errors.
Those errors include giving inadequate weight to pelvic surgeons’ evidence and reversing the onus of proof, according to court documents.
Vaginal mesh implants are at the centre of an appeal by Johnson & Johnson against a landmark Australian court ruling. Photograph: BBC
Information brochures about vaginal mesh implants that left Australian women with debilitating pain and injuries weren’t the “be-all-and-end-all of warnings”, a lawyer for the manufacturers has told a court.
Three federal court judges on Monday began hearing an appeal into a landmark 2019 ruling that Johnson & Johnson Group firms acted negligently and concealed the true extent of complications from the pelvic implants.
Hundreds of the synthetic implants eroded, extruded or caused infection without warning – leaving women in chronic pain and with damage to surrounding organs.
New abuse allegations against monks, former headmaster of Delbarton School in latest lawsuits
Updated Dec 10, 2020;
In the latest round of lawsuits against the order of Catholic monks that runs the prestigious Delbarton School, three plaintiffs are alleging they were sexually abused in the 1980s, including one plaintiff who said he was abused by three monks.
The Order of St. Benedict of New Jersey has faced at least 19 lawsuits since Dec. 1, 2019 when New Jersey extended the statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse lawsuits and allowed a two-year window for those who were previously barred from filing suits by time limits.