Paragard® Lawsuit

The Paragard MDL grew to 4,185 pending actions.

There were 4,156 pending actions in the Paragard MDL.

The second bellwether trial, initially set for May is rescheduled to take place on April 12, 2027.

The Paragard MDL grew to 4,111 pending actions.

The court has ordered plaintiffs and defendants to begin the next round of bellwether selection. Plaintiffs and defendants each get to select eight cases: four when Paragard was manufactured by Teva Pharmaceuticals and four when it was manufactured by CooperSurgical. The set of 16 cases will be whittled down and subject to vetoes by each side.

Four cases will be selected in total, after the rounds of vetoes and court selection.

There are 4,071 pending actions in the Paragard MDL.

The Paragard MDL grew to 3,984 pending actions.

A new court order provided updates on the second and third bellwether trials, Robere v. Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Inc. and Braxton v. Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Inc., respectively. Robere will continue on with its new April trial schedule. Braxton is stayed, pending resolution of appeal motions from the defense.

There were 3,982 pending actions in the Paragard IUD MDL as of April 1.

The Paragard IUD MDL now has 3,926 pending actions.

The second Paragard bellwether trial, Robere v. Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Inc., has been rescheduled from May to September 2026. The rescheduling comes after the defense verdict of the first bellwether. Parties will now have more time to parse the information gained in the first trial.

A Georgia jury ruled in favor of Teva Pharmaceuticals in the first Paragard bellwether trial. The plaintiff alleged the company didn’t adequately warn of the potential risk of broken IUDs.

As of February 2, the Paragard IUD MDL increased by 67 claims to 3,867.

New plaintiffs joined the MDL in December, bringing the total to 3,800.

Throughout November, plaintiffs continued to join the Paragard IUD MDL. There are now 3,749 pending cases.

There are now 3,658 plaintiffs suing Paragard in the MDL for harms related to its IUD.

With more actions filed, the total number of active cases in the Paragard MDL rose to 3,595 by the end of September.

There were 3,569 pending actions in the Paragard IUD MDL.

At the beginning of August there were 3,529 active pending lawsuits in the Paragard IUD MDL.

Judge Leigh Martin May issued a case management order (CMO) setting dates for three bellwether trials in 2026: January 20, March 3 and May 11. The CMO also set new deadlines for sharing documents, deadlines for motions (Daubert and dispositive) and responses, and the closing of expert discovery.

There were 3,474 pending actions in the Paragard IUD MDL.

The Paragard IUD MDL grew to 3,330 pending actions.

As of May 1, 2025, the Paragard IUD MDL increased to 3,252 pending actions.

Judge May ordered the first case to go before a jury in the Paragard MDL. This trial may be heard as soon as January 2026. While the outcome of this trial isn’t binding on other cases in the MDL, it may impact how other cases proceed.

The Paragard IUD MDL had 3,036 pending actions.

Judge May held two evidentiary hearings in late March to resolve ongoing disputes about document sharing and deposition scheduling to keep the discovery process moving and avoid delays.

There were 2,965 pending actions in the Paragard IUD MDL.

Judge May issued a scheduling order delaying the first bellwether trials. The first trial was scheduled to begin in January 2026.

Judge May dismissed a handful of suits in the Paragard MDL. The claims were time barred by various states’ statutes of limitation.

The total number of cases in the Paragard IUD MDL rose to 2,882.

More lawsuits have been filed in the Paragard MDL. The total number of active cases has grown to 2,862.

Plaintiffs continued to file Paragard IUD lawsuits, bringing the total number of cases in the docket to 2,824 at the start of November.

The first Paragard IUD lawsuit bellwether trials are scheduled for December 2025 and February 2026, pending confirmation from  defense counsel.

At a status conference, the court set a deadline of December 11, 2024, for producing the custodial files requested in August. They can be produced on a rolling basis.

The judge denied plaintiffs’ July motion to add Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (the international wing of the company) to the master complaint.

The Paragard MDL had 2,747 actions pending as of October 2024. This was a decrease in the number of pending actions since September – the first decrease in nearly five years.

A status conference is scheduled for the end of the month. It will be between the lead counsel for plaintiffs and defendants. The Court will rule on plaintiffs’ motion to compel the defendants to produce important custodial documents, as well as plaintiffs’ motion to amend their complaint to add Teva Ltd. as a defendant. The Court will also hear arguments about future deadlines in this case, including setting discovery, expert and trial dates.

FDA safety regulators acknowledged that leaving IUD fragments in a woman’s uterus has “unknown consequences,” and “device breakage can subject patients to risk and cause anxiety for both patients and healthcare providers.”

CooperSurgical launched a new Paragard IUD designed to be inserted with one hand. The company expects the device to work similarly to their other IUDs. 

Nearly 2,800 actions were pending in the Paragard MDL.

Plaintiffs’ counsel filed a motion to compel certain custodial files from defendants that have yet to be produced.

Continued FDA investigations showed that Paragard’s IUDs still pose a risk of breakage. CooperSurgical was trying to fix the issue.

The Paragard MDL now has nearly 2,775 plaintiffs. In January 2024, the MDL had 2,416 plaintiffs.

Plaintiffs’ counsel filed a motion to amend the master complaint to add Teva Ltd. as a defendant in this litigation. The Court will likely rule on the plaintiffs’ motion in the fall.

During the July status conference, leadership for plaintiffs discussed how changes in counsel for the defense have led to delays in completion of the discovery phase. Plaintiffs indicated their intent to file appropriate motions to compel delayed, deficient or missing discovery.

Defendants indicated their intent to file various motions to dismiss certain plaintiffs’ cases based upon allegedly deficient statute of limitations and statute of repose issues.
 
The Paragard MDL reached 2,736 actions pending.

Presiding Judge Leigh Martin May issued an order that individual cases in the Paragard MDL will be analyzed using laws from the state where the case was originally filed. The judge allows exemptions if the case was filed in a court of improper venue or jurisdiction. Cases filed directly to the MDL will use the choice-of-law analysis for the state where the district court and division would have had personal jurisdiction over the plaintiff.

The Paragard MDL had 2,690 actions pending.

Since January 2024, 235 individual cases have been added to the MDL, bringing the current total to 2,651 pending actions. As of May, the Paragard MDL had the 15th largest number of pending actions among all current MDLs.

The Court removed previous members of the Plaintiff Steering Committee and appointed new members. Motley Rice attorney Kristen Hermiz is one of the newly appointed members.

The U.S. District Court for the Northeastern District of Georgia, Atlanta Division, ordered that 10 cases from the Paragard MDL be selected as part of a pool of potential bellwether cases. From there, the parties involved would use that pool to select a bellwether case. 

Fidelma Fitzpatrick was appointed to the Plaintiffs’ Executive Committee. She is a medical attorney for Motley Rice and specializes in women’s health matters.

Judge Leigh Martin May appointed several other attorneys to fill roles such as co-lead counsel, Plaintiffs’ Liaison Counsel and Plaintiffs’ Leadership Committee members (including the Plaintiffs’ Executive Committee and Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee).  The order appointing attorneys to these positions also outlined the duties and responsibilities of these roles. 

The FDA issued a letter to CooperSurgical about a potentially false or misleading promotional video about the Paragard copper IUD. The FDA asked CooperSurgical to address concerns related to failure to discuss potential side effects and to submit a written response within 15 days.

Individual Paragard lawsuits from more than 30 districts transferred to the Paragard MDL in the Northern District of Georgia. At that time, the MDL consisted of nearly 60 actions. Judge Leigh Martin May was assigned to the MDL. 

CooperSurgical entered an agreement to purchase Paragard from Teva Pharmaceuticals. The agreement was worth an estimated $1.1 billion.