Wexler Wallace and Co-Counsel Recognized as Law360 Legal Lions
Wexler Wallace is proud to announce that Partners Edward A. Wallace, Mark R. Miller, and Associate Timothy Jackson have, along with co-counsel, been recognized by Law360 as Legal Lions. Law360 honored the firms for successfully defeating Johnson & Johnson’s bid to throw out a $20 million judgement against the company’s Prolift pelvic mesh device in the case of Kaiser v. Ethicon.
Along with attorneys from Wexler Wallace, Law360 recognized co-counsel Thomas O. Plouff of Costello McMahon Burke & Murphy Ltd. and Jeffrey Kuntz of Wagstaff & Cartmell LLP.
In March 2018, an Indiana jury awarded plaintiffs Barbara and Anton Kaiser $35 million for injuries incurred from Johnson & Johnson sub-division Ethicon’s Prolift hernia mesh. The jury awarded $10 million in compensation and $25 million in punitive damages, which was later reduced to $10 million by the trial judge.
In the decision, issued on Tuesday, January 14, 2020, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed the trial court’s original ruling on Ethicon’s design defect liability and failure to warn about the device. The three-judge panel also rejected Ethicon’s appeal for a new trial regarding jury instructions and evidentiary issues, issuing a full rejection of Ethicon’s arguments.
“Ethicon’s appeal is a broad-spectrum attack on the judgment, starting with an argument about federal preemption and moving through several issues of Indiana product liability law, a claimed evidentiary error, and challenges to the compensatory and punitive damages. We reject these arguments and affirm.”
Wexler Wallace is honored to have been recognized by Law360 for the hard work of our attorneys and co-counsel, and we look forward to continuing to fight for our clients who have been harmed by corporate malfeasance.
For media inquiries about this case, please contact Ed Wallace at 312-485-0009 (eaw@wexlerwallace.com), Jeff Kuntz at 816-522-5752 (jkuntz@wagstaffcartmell.com), or Tom Plouff at TPlouff@costellaw.com