Court of Appeals affirms jury verdict for 3M, reverses summary judgment in pending federal cases

On August 17, 2021, The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a 2018 jury verdict in favor of 3M in Gareis – the only case involving the 3M™ Bair Hugger™ system that has gone to trial. As the Court of Appeals noted: “The jury returned a special verdict for 3M, finding that the Gareises failed to prove both that the Bair Hugger was defectively designed and that the Bair Hugger caused Louis Gareis’s PJI [periprosthetic joint infection].”

This ruling follows yesterday’s Court of Appeals’ procedural order reversing the Minnesota federal court’s dismissal of the other federal cases. In that ruling, the Court of Appeals acknowledged “weaknesses” in plaintiffs’ experts’ arguments, but held that it was wrong for the lower court to exclude them across-the-board under the Court’s permissive standard for admitting expert opinions. In Gareis, the jury heard the plaintiffs’ experts’ testimony and rejected it.

Scientific research supports the conclusion that the Bair Hugger system helps patients by maintaining normothermia, which is shown to provide valuable benefits, including reducing the risk of surgical site infections, reduced mortality, fewer post-operative heart attacks, reduced blood loss and faster recovery times. In 2017, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration sent a letter to health care providers recommending that they use patient warming devices for surgical procedures when clinically warranted. The FDA’s recommendation includes forced-air warming devices such as the Bair Hugger system.

The Bair Hugger warming system, which is used to warm patients before, during and after surgery, has been safely used more than 300 million times in the past 30 years. It continues to be used thousands of times each day in medical facilities worldwide.