John Gismondi serving as local liaison counsel for Essure lawsuits

Attorney John Gismondi serves as local liaison counsel for multiple lawsuits filed against Pittsburgh-based Bayer Corporation, the seller of a contraception device known as Essure which led to a long stream of injuries to women throughout the United States and which was eventually removed from the market by Bayer in 2018.

The Essure device was a metallic coil that was injected into a woman’s fallopian tubes with the idea of provoking the formation of scar tissue which would then block or occlude the tube and prevent a woman from becoming pregnant.  The device caused a variety of medical complications, but the lawsuits filed here in Pittsburgh claim that the Bayer covered up the extent of those injuries by not reporting a massive number of complaints it was receiving from women or their doctors about injuries the device was causing.  This failure to disclosure the injuries went on for several years until they were eventually brought to the attention of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).  Once the FDA began to investigate the device, they determined that Bayer’s warning was inadequate and misleading, and they required Bayer to insert a special “Black Box” warning on the product, something that is reserved for only the most serious medical side effects.  Not long after the “Black Box” warning went into effect, Bayer decided to completely remove Essure from the market in the United States.

A bundle of cases have been filed against Bayer in the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas because Bayer Corporation is located within Allegheny County, and it is expected that more cases will be filed in the future in Allegheny County.