3M’s Bair Hugger device. Courtesy photo

A federal judge has granted summary judgment against more than 5,000 lawsuits over 3M surgical warming blankets after she tossed the plaintiffs’ experts.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Joan Ericksen of the District of Minnesota granted 3M’s motion for summary judgment that sought to exclude the plaintiffs’ general causation experts. The lawsuits, coordinated in multidistrict litigation, had alleged that the Bair Hugger Forced Air Warming system increased the risk of infection.

“There is no legitimate scientific support for the plaintiffs’ theory,” said Todd Fruchterman, general manager of 3M Medical Solutions Business, in a statement Thursday. “Most importantly, we want physicians and patients to understand that the practice of patient warming is supported by leading health care institutions, professional societies and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Our industry-leading 3M Bair Hugger system has been proven to be a safe, effective and efficient method of delivering patient warming therapy.”

Co-lead plaintiffs attorneys Genevieve Zimmerman of Meshbesher & Spence in Minneapolis and Gabriel Assaad of Kennedy Hodges and Kyle Farrar of Farrar & Ball, both in Houston, did not respond to requests for comment.

The U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation coordinated the MDL over the Bair Hugger in 2015. Last year, a federal jury sided with 3M in the first bellwether trial, which ended in a defense verdict.

After trial, 3M filed a motion for Ericksen to reconsider a 2017 order on summary judgment. In its renewed motion for summary judgment, filed on Jan. 24, 3M cited newly released scientific research that refuted claims from plaintiffs’ attorneys that the Bair Hugger disrupts a protective “forcefield” around patients during surgery, an idea that plaintiffs’ own expert called “absolute rubbish” and “silly” during the first bellwether trial.

In a Feb. 21 response, plaintiffs’ attorneys countered there was no “new groundbreaking evidence” refuting their experts’ opinions and that 3M had engaged in a “game of semantics” and “thrown up yet another smokescreen of mischaracterizations and faux science in a blatant attempt to re-litigate settled issues of general causation.”

Ericksen ordered both sides to provide more details in a May 6 order, such as addressing the newly released scientific research and providing any studies excluding other causes of infection during surgeries.

That prompted 3M to criticize the “built-for-litigation methodology” of plaintiffs’ experts, citing the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit’s ruling last year tossing the plaintiffs’ experts in 3,128 lawsuits over Pfizer’s cholesterol drug Lipitor.

“Plaintiffs’ science is manufactured for the courtroom. It is not real science, it is not reliable, and it should be excluded,” wrote Benjamin Hulse, a partner at Blackwell Burke in Minneapolis, in a May 16 brief.

In their own May 16 brief, plaintiffs’ attorneys said the judge’s questions focused on specific, not general causation, and noted that a federal magistrate judge rejected their request earlier this year to depose the authors of the new scientific research that 3M cited.

On Wednesday, Ericksen granted 3M’s motion for summary judgment to exclude plaintiffs expert testimony. She directed the court clerk to enter judgment on “all remaining member cases in this MDL.”

Her memorandum outlining her reasons was under seal, but her order said she would unseal the document after lawyers on both sides submit suggestions for redactions by Aug. 6.

According to 3M’s press release, a Minnesota Court of Appeals decision six months earlier had upheld dismissal of 61 other Bair Hugger cases in state court.

The ruling has no impact on two cases remaining in state courts—one in Missouri, and one in Texas. It also comes after lawyers in the MDL have lobbed sanctions against one another, with 3M accusing plaintiffs attorneys of disclosing sealed documents as part of a motion to compel in the Texas state court case.

A federal magistrate judge in Minnesota heard arguments July 16 but has yet to rule on the sanctions motions.