Supreme Court reverses Zimmer win in $20m knee implant lawsuit
Reported by: Irina Robu, PhD
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court yesterday reversed a state appeals court’s decision to overturn a $20 million verdict against in a knee implant lawsuit. Margo Pollet had a double knee replacement procedure in 2006 using Zimmer’s Gender Solutions devices but after making a Zimmer promotional video which included riding a bicycle and running on treadmill, she claimed that it damaged her knees. She sued for negligence saying the injuries occured during filming the video. A jury awarded Polett millions in damages after finding that Zimmer was 34% culpable. The jury also put 30% of the blame on Polett herself and 36% on the marketing firm Public Communications for its involvement with the ad.
The Pennsylvania Superior Court last October ruled that the lower court incorrectly shifted the burden of proof onto Zimmer by asking the company to provide alternative explanations for Polett’s revisions surgeries, thus leading the jury to a potentially false conclusion, and ordered a new trial.
“In sum, the trial court’s ruling that Dr. Booth’s expert testimony as to causation was not barred by [Pennsylvania law] was amply supported by the evidence of record, and thus was reasonable. Consequently, we conclude that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in allowing Dr. Booth to render an expert opinion at trial, and that the Superior Court erred by reassessing the evidence relied upon by the trial court in making its ruling, and by supplanting the trial court’s findings with its own evaluation of that evidence. We, therefore, reverse the order of the Superior Court as to this issue,” McCloskey Todd wrote.
The Supreme Court ordered the Superior Court to review whether the trial court was wrong to deny the defendants’ bid to overturn the verdict.
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This is very insightful. There is no doubt that there is the bias you refer to. 42 years ago, when I was postdocing in biochemistry/enzymology before completing my residency in pathology, I knew that there were very influential mambers of the faculty, who also had large programs, and attracted exceptional students. My mentor, it was said (although he was a great writer), could draft a project on toilet paper and call the NIH. It can’t be true, but it was a time in our history preceding a great explosion. It is bizarre for me to read now about eNOS and iNOS, and about CaMKII-á, â, ã, ä – isoenzymes. They were overlooked during the search for the genome, so intermediary metabolism took a back seat. But the work on protein conformation, and on the mechanism of action of enzymes and ligand and coenzyme was just out there, and became more important with the research on signaling pathways. The work on the mechanism of pyridine nucleotide isoenzymes preceded the work by Burton Sobel on the MB isoenzyme in heart. The Vietnam War cut into the funding, and it has actually declined linearly since.
A few years later, I was an Associate Professor at a new Medical School and I submitted a proposal that was reviewed by the Chairman of Pharmacology, who was a former Director of NSF. He thought it was good enough. I was a pathologist and it went to a Biochemistry Review Committee. It was approved, but not funded. The verdict was that I would not be able to carry out the studies needed, and they would have approached it differently. A thousand young investigators are out there now with similar letters. I was told that the Department Chairmen have to build up their faculty. It’s harder now than then. So I filed for and received 3 patents based on my work at the suggestion of my brother-in-law. When I took it to Boehringer-Mannheim, they were actually clueless.