David Estes

A Bergen County jury awarded Elizabeth Hrymoc $15 million in December 2017 after finding that Johnson & Johnson's Ethicon subsidiary sold her a defective Prolift pelvic mesh device and failed to warn her of its risks, leaving her with chronic pain and unrelieved incontinence. The New Jersey Appellate Division vacated the verdict in March 2021, holding that the trial court's exclusion of FDA 510(k) clearance evidence denied Ethicon a fair trial, and ordered a new trial. Hrymoc settled her claim on undisclosed terms before the New Jersey Supreme Court took up the underlying evidentiary question in a companion case in 2023, so no independently verified final figure replaces the vacated $15 million.

In February 2013, a jury in the Superior Court of New Jersey in Atlantic City awarded Linda Gross, a registered nurse from Watertown, South Dakota, and her husband Jeffrey $3.35 million in compensatory damages after finding that Ethicon, Inc. and its parent Johnson & Johnson failed to give her implanting surgeon adequate warnings about the Gynecare Prolift vaginal mesh device and made a fraudulent misrepresentation to Gross herself. Days later, the same jury added $7.76 million in punitive damages, bringing the verdict to $11.1 million. Gross had gone through 18 operations to repair the damage after the Prolift was implanted in July 2006. Ethicon and Johnson & Johnson appealed, but the New Jersey Appellate Division affirmed the verdict in March 2016, and the New Jersey Supreme Court denied certification that December, making the $11.1 million verdict final.