Four women in Missouri filed a Paragard lawsuit claiming the intrauterine device (IUD) Paragard broke during the removal procedure. According to their claim, the four plaintiffs who filed their claims in federal court in Kansas City suffered serious injuries caused by the devices’ pieces shredding through their internal organs.
Now the women want to hold the manufacturer and its successor company responsible for all the damage they sustained, and seek compensation in court. Their lawyer allege that the companies were negligent in warning the public about the dangers of the defective Paragard IUD.
Paragard is a plastic T-shaped originally manufactured by Teva Pharmaceuticals, and works by providing long-term birth control for up to ten years without releasing hormones. Its activity is due to copper which is slowly released causing a local inflammatory reaction that prevents egg fertilization.
However, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration received up to more than 1,600 adverse reaction reports stating that Paragard broke during removal operations, with nearly 700 of them being classified as serious.
Many years after its approval by the FDA in 1984, Teva sold Paragard to The Cooper Companies in 2017. Now, the two pharmaceutical companies are named as defendants in the upcoming trial.
According to other cases filed in courts across the country, the Paragard intrauterine contraceptive device has been associated with a risk of breaking inside the uterus. Many plaintiffs claim that the device broke shortly after implant or during removal, causing grievous injuries when the fragments migrate to other parts of the body.
Several law firms are currently trying to hold the manufacturer liable for the damage sustained by the many alleged victims. All these civil actions filed in the previous months have yet to be consolidated in a multidistrict litigation (MDL). However, back in 2017, the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML) already centralized a mass tort for Mirena, a very similar IUD.
